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TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



AMERICAN TYPES 



ANIMAL LIFE 



ST. GEORGE MIVART, F.R.S. 

author of 
"essays and criticisms," etc. 



WITH ILLUSTRATIONS 



BOSTON 
LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY 



I 



n 






'01 






^<5P 



s? 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 



r. MONKETS 1 

II. THE OPOSSUM 36 

III. THE TURKEY t - 66 

IV. THE BULLFEOG 96 

V. THE RATTLESNAKE 122 

VI. THE SEROTINE, OR CAROLINA BAT . . . . I50 

Vn. THE AMERICAN BISON 1 77 

Vin. THE RACOON . .211 

IX. THE SLOTH 246 

X. THE SEA-LION 275 

XI. WHALES AND MERMAIDS ...... 303 

XII. THE OTHER BEASTS . » 336 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 





PAGE 




PAGE 


The Siamang Gibbon 


13 


The Proteus . 


no 


The Proboscis Monkey . 


16 


The Amblystoma . 


III 


The White-nosed Monkey; 


19 


TheAxolotl . 


112 


The Wanderoo 


21 


The Coecilia . 


114 


The Black Macaque 


22 


The Common Rattlesnake 


123 


The Chacma . 


23 


The Rhinoceros Viper . 


132 


The Long-haired Spidei 




The India Cobra . 


136 


Monkey . 


25 


The Two-coloured Sea- 




The Bald-headed Saki 


29 


snake 


139 


The Squirrel Monkey 


31 


The Boa- Constrictor 


140 


The Virginian Opossum 


37 


The Carolina Bat . 


i52 


The Vulpine Phalanger 


45 


The Long-Eared Bat 


160 


The Tasmanian Wolf 


47 


The Megaderma Lyra 


163 


The Koala 


49 


The Vampire . 


167 


The Echidna . 


50 


The Kalong . 


170 


The Chgeropus 


55 


The Colugo . 


175 


The Myrmecobius . 


57 


The American Bison 


177 


The Marsupial Mole 


60 


The Yak . 


181 


The Ornithorhynchus 


61 


The Cape Buffalo . 


182 


The Peacock Pheasant 


69 


The Musk Ox . 


^^3 


Lady Amherst's Pheasan 


b 70 


The Rocky Mountair 




The Ocellated Turkey 


n 


Goat 


185 


The Red Bird of Paradise 


^ 75 


The Harnessed Antelope 


i 186 


Schrenck's Tanager. 


. 77 


The Prong-horned Ante 




The Chauna . 


■ 78 


lope . 


187 


The Condor . 


79 


The Wapiti . 


188 


The Extinct Starling 


92 


The Musk Deer 


189 


The Bullfrog 


97 


The Chevrotain 


190 


The Pipa 


105 


The Collared Peccary 


196 


The Amphiuma 


109 


The Brazilian Tapir 


20J 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



The Common African 




The Narwhal . 


324 


Ehinoceros 


202 


The Eound-headed Por- 




The True or Common 




poise 


329 


Zebra 


206 


The Common Dolphin . 


330 


The Kacoon . 




212 


The Eing-tailed Lemur . 


339 


The Coati-mundi 




214 


The Short-tailed Indris . 


340 


The Kinkajou . 




215 


The Long-tailed Indris . 


341 


The Sloth Bear 




220 


The Senegal Galago 


344 


The Poiana . 




231 


The Slender Loris . 


345 


The Arctogale 




233 


The Potto 


347 


The Binturong 




234 


The Tarsier 


348 


The Foussa . 




236 


The Aye-aye . 


349 


The American Badger . 


239 


The Prairie Dog 


353 


The Skunk ... 


241 


The Mole-rat . . 


357 


The Two-toed Sloth 


252 


The Jerboa 


358 


The Great Ant-eater 


254 


The Tri-coloured Tree- 




The Smallest Ant-eater . 


256 


Porcupine 


359 


The Apar Armadillo 


258 


The Eussian Desman 


362 


The Long-tailed Pangolin 


260 


The Gymnura . 


363 


The Aard Vark 


263 


The Dwarf Tupaia . 


364 


The Californian Sea-Lion 


277 


The Typical Jumping 




The Greenland Seal 


287 


Shrew 


365 


The Sea-Elephant . 


292 


The Potomogale 


366 


The Walrus . 


294 


The Tailless Tanrec 


366 


The Dugong . 


304 


The Solenodon of Cuba . 


367 


The Manatee . 


306 


The Golden Mole . 


368 


The Greenland Whs 


lie . 


315 







TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



I 

MONKEYS 

If any one knew when it was that the first flint-imple- 
ment was struck out with a will by Palseolithic men, he 
might be able to tell us how long the period is since the 
monkey's resemblance to ourselves was first a subject of 
remark. Of that period, the time which has elapsed 
since the very old line, " Simia quam similis turpissima 
hestia nobis" was written, can, at any rate, be but a 
small fraction. Of late the progress of knowledge has 
largely increased the interest, felt from of old, in this 
most exceptional group of animals. The more we know 
of science the more we know of their bodily resemblance 
to us and of their divergence from every other creature, 
and the more also do we become interested in their ways 
and in that problem which concerns their origin. 

Most readers are probably, by this time, not a little 
tired of Darwinian controversy ; and certainly we have 
no intention of dealing with it here. That would lead 
us into psychology and metaphysics, while our present 
purpose is to deal only with what appear to us to be the 
most interesting facts t^hich concern their natural history, 
and not to analyse the phenomena of the ape mind. 



2 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

Readers who may be interested in that very important 
question are referred to the author's recent work, entitled 
"The Origin of Human Reason" (Kegan Paul, Trench 
Triibner & Co.). It is pretty certain, however, that were 
apes as like us mentally as they are bodily, that very 
similarity would result in a notable difference. Some 
men are Radicals and some Conservatives, but apes would 
give a solid vote for the most Conservative ticket, since 
that progress and advance of civilisation which pleases 
most of us means, ultimately, death to them. 

Progress has indeed its drawbacks, even for the zoolo- 
gist and for every passionate lover of Nature. Since the 
days when Banks and Solander were carried by Captain 
Cook round the globe to explore new regions what havoc 
has not been committed ! That fair, new world upon 
which they gazed with admiration and wonder, such as 
we might feel could we visit another planet, is being 
rapidly deprived of its interesting animal inhabitants ; 
even more, perhaps, through the pernicious agency of 
enthusiasts for " acclimatisation " than by the spread of 
agriculture or the multiplication of flocks and herds. The 
plains of Africa, which only half a century ago teemed 
with wild animals, are becoming a zoological desert, and 
the " common " zebra is now almost extinct, while the 
bison (so often called buffalo) would very soon be exter- 
minated but for the protection of the autocratic empire 
of the East and the great republic of the West. 

In the forests and jungles, the wide wastes and rocky 
fastnesses of the tropics, however, the agile ape will yet 
long hold his own on both sides of the Atlantic. 

Every one knows that there are monkeys in tropical 
America, no less than in Africa and Asia; but few 
persons who are not naturalists know how strangely 
different are the species which inhabit the Old World 



MONKEYS 3 

from those of the New. The whole mass of apes of all 
kinds is, for the purposes of study, grouped in two 
families, each of which is considered as made up of 
smaller groups termed " sub-families " ; and these again 
of "genera," each genus containing certain different 
kinds or species of apes. Now, no single kind of ape 
which exists in America is found anywhere else ; so that 
all the above-mentioned groups are similarly confined 
either to the east or to the west of the Atlantic Ocean. 

The Old World has given rise to the chimpanzee, gorilla, 
and orang, the long-armed apes, many long- tailed apes, 
and every species of baboon. 

In the New World are found spider monkeys and 
howling monkeys, sapajous and sakis, the gentle night 
ape (dourocouli), the graceful squirrel monkeys, and those 
charming pigmies of the monkey world, the little mar- 
mosets. We have thus two great families of monkeys, 
one including all the above from the chimpanzee to the 
baboons ; the other comprising the I'emaining forms, 
namely, from the spider monkeys to the marmosets. 

These two families of Old and New World apes differ 
literally from head to tail. In most of those points in 
which they differ, it is the Old World forms which are 
the more like man ; but, nevertheless, in some respects 
the Americans have progressed further than the denizens 
of Africa and Asia. They are possessed of an additional 
grinding tooth, and no others can make so wise a use of 
their tails. There seems to be no forest region in the 
world comparable with that of Brazil ; for the dreary one 
of Africa, described by Stanley, appears far inferior in 
the development of its trees. But in Brazil, as Alfred 
Wallace has so graphically described, forest is fitted to 
and superimposed on forest. At a great height a waving 
sea of verdure, rich with animal life, is spread out in the 



4 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

dazzling sunshine, borne up on columns whicli tower 
through the obscurity of the vast space beneath, wherein 
a second growth of what would elsewhere seem noble 
trees finds a congenial homoc Beneath these, again, there 
may yet be another similar but smaller growth, while 
lycopods and a multitude of humbler herbs clothe the 
soil. Evidently, if adaptation to surrounding conditions 
takes place anywhere among animals, special adaptations 
to forest life may be looked for here ; and here they are 
found. Many a bird and beast which elsewhere exists 
in plains or in woods of relatively small extent, has here 
its emphatically arboreal representative, as the fowl 
seems to be represented by the curassow and the goose 
by the horned screamer. For animals which cannot fly, 
but have to pass their lives amid such an ocean of forest, 
it is especially needful that they should be supplied with 
all possible means of avoiding a fatal fall. 

Thus the sloth, which passes its life hanging beneath 
the branches, has its hands and feet changed into what 
seem mere hooks,which remain bent over when at rest and 
need an effort to unclasp. By this means the animal 
can sleep securely while hanging, back downward, within 
its leafy bower. Monkeys, as we all know, have the feet 
modified into prehensile organs acting like hands, the 
great toe grasping powerfully in opposition to the other 
four. This modification wonderfully adapts them for 
tree life. There is, however, one further possible 
adaptation, and only one, and it is just that very adapta- 
tion which is to be found in the monkeys of American 
forests. It is an adaptation which supplies them with 
wliat is practically a fifth hand. In the spider monkeys, 
the woolly monkeys and the howling monkeys, the 
under-surface of the terminal portion of the tail is 
naked, so that it can be very closely applied to any 



MONKEYS 5 

surface Avith which it is in contact. The tail itself is a 
very powerful organ, and is capable of curling its own 
end so firmly round an object that the animal's whole 
body can thus be safely suspended. A tail of this 
kind is called a " prehensile tail." Not every American 
monkey has it, but no monkey which is not American 
possesses anything of the kind. Its possession must 
greatly add to the security and ease of locomotion of 
any forest-dwelling beast. An amusing illustration of 
the widespread ignorance which exists as to such 
matters, and also of the use of the imagination in a 
way not strictly scientific, occurred with reference 
to the Prince of Wales's visit to India some years ago. 
Among other places of interest the Prince visited was 
the Temple of Monkeys at Benares. His visit was 
duly depicted in one of the illustrated journals, and 
no doubt with scrupulous fidelity in all those points to 
which the artist directed his attention. Nevertheless, 
these monkeys are represented as having prehensile 
tails ; which is about as accurate as would be a picture 
of a fox-hunt by a supposed eye-witness, wherein the 
hounds should be represented each with a fox's brush for 
tail, Reynard himself bearing the curly caudal appendage 
of a thoroughbred pug. 

But it is not only in form and structure that American 
monkeys are distinguished, but also in quickness of intel- 
ligence and gentleness of disposition. 

At least many of those large animals, the spider 
monkeys, are singularly gentle, and such is especially the 
case with the httle squirrel monkeys — perhaps the most 
attractive of the* whole order to which they belong. As 
to intelligence, it is the commoner monkeys of South 
America, the sapajous, whereof itinerant Italians love 
to make use for tricks and performances. We can vouch 



6 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

from our own repeated observations, for the amazing 
skill and rapidity with which they will catch and return 
a ball, sweep their stand, load and fire their miniature 
gun, and play the various antics to which they have 
been trained. 

Nevertheless, the monkeys of the Old "World are, as 
we have said, the more man-like in structure, and no 
animal to be found between the Atlantic and the Pacific, 
makes any approach to the closeness wherewith the 
anthropoid (or specially man-like apes) resemble us. 

Some Old World monkeys have no thumbs, and none 
have what we should call a good one ; but even the most 
brutal baboon has a better one than has any of the 
American apes, in all of which the thumb is more like a 
fifth finger, bending around nearly in the same plane as 
the others. 

Only one monkey has a chin, and that is an inhabitant 
of Sumatra, and no ape out of Asia has a really pro- 
minent nose. 

No monkey's tones are so pleasant as are the flute-like 
notes which the sapajous will often emit when pleased, 
but no ape gives out such man-like sounds as are 
chanted by the long-armed apes, or gibbons, of the Old 
World. Often he has a short tail, and sometimes none, 
but almost all those of America have a long one, though 
in a few very singular forms, to be presently noted, it is 
short. 

Monkeys of the Old World ascend to higher latitudes 
than do those of the New. None are known to us as 
having been found in America to the north of southern 
Mexico ; but monkeys are denizens of Gibraltar, Central 
Asia, and Japan, in the eastern hemisphere. This great 
distinctness between the apes of the Old World and the 
New, at once suggests some curious questions to which, 



MONKEYS 7 

as yet, it is quite out of our power to return answers. 
Which group is the older ? Did monkeys, as is commonly 
supposed, first exist in the Old World ? If so, then did 
the American monkeys originate in the New World ? and 
if not, how did they find their way into it and whence 
did they come ? 

It is a common opinion that the aboriginal tribes of 
American men are of Mongol affinity and migrated from 
Asia ; but as this is a question we have not studied, we 
preserve an open mind concerning it. Although wild 
American dogs have been domesticated, Asiatic emi- 
grants may none the less have brought domestic dogs 
with them. But however this may be, it is pretty certain 
they brought with them no monkeys. No fossil remains, 
so far as we know, at all justify a belief in the Old 
World origin of New World forms ; so that up to the 
present time the relative age of the two groups and the 
origin of either of them are mysteries. Speculative 
opinions have indeed been formed favouring the notion 
that the American apes are specially related to certain 
creatures called Lemurs (to be seen in many zoological 
gardens) which have their headquarters in Madagascar. 
The evidence, however, upon which some naturalists 
rely as justifying this opinion, is, in our eyes, untrust- 
worthy. Neither have we been able to detect any sign 
of the former existence of creatures of the monkey 
kind that were intermediate between those of the Old 
World and those of the New ; so that it seems to us not 
improbable that the two groups may have had an entirely 
difierent origin, and that the points of structure in which 
they so remarkably agree, are but analogical resemblances 
and not signs of any special blood relationship between 
the two. Bearing in mind the great distinctness of these 
two families, we may now proceed briefly to review the 



8 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

leading forms contained in each, commencing with the 
Old World family, and especially with the species belong- 
ing to it which are most like ourselves — the anthropoid 
apes. 

First of these, in popular estimation, stands the famed 
gorilla. Our knowledge of this largest of apes, knowledge 
both ordinary and scientific, is due to Americans. It was 
really discovered by Dr. Thomas Savage, who, with the 
assistance of a missionary named Wilson, procured mate- 
rials sufficient to enable Prof. Jeffries Wyman to describe 
important parts of its anatomy. (See the Boston Journal 
of Natural History, vol. iv. 1843-4, and vol. v. 1847.) 
That absurd dogma which has been defined and decreed 
by leading agnostics, the dogma that "e^^^ry man receives 
microscopic justice in this world," can be pretty well re- 
futed by the history of physical science. In geography 
we have one notable instance. Christopher Columbus, 
with a hardihood now difficult to realise, sailed across an 
utterly unknown ocean and discovered a new Continent, 
which, nevertheless, has not been named after him, but 
after his imitator, Amerigo Vespucci. In another branch 
of science we often hear something about galvanism, and 
sometimes use the term. That curious kind of force 
received its name from Galvani, who called attention to 
it in 1789 ; but Swammerdam had discovered it one 
hundred and thirty years earlier. 

The last biological novelty is the hypothesis that every 
organism, however long or short its life may be, contains 
an immortal substance, transmitted from generation to 
generation, and from century to century. Every one 
now couples with this idea the name of Prof. Weismann, 
ignoring the fact that the same doctrine was publicly 
taught by poor old Sir Richard Owen half a century 



MONKEYS 9 

Similarly, the discovery of the gorilla has been so 
generally attributed to Mr. du Chaillu, that justice 
makes it needful to remind our readers of the debt due 
to American discoverers and describers of a preceding 
generation. 

Nevertheless it seems probable that the animal had 
been described, and even specimens of it obtained, more 
than two thousand three hundred years earlier. In 
510 B.C., the Carthaginian Government decreed that 
thirty thousand persons should be transported south of 
the Pillars of Hercules to found Phoenician colonies on 
the West African coast. Hanno set out accordingly with 
a fleet of sixty vessels, and subsequently read a report of 
his expedition to the Senate at Carthage.* Therein he 
stated that after a long journey they entered a gulf, and 
near it found a number of " wild men " entirely covered 
with hair, who were called " gorillas " by his interpreters. 
" We pursued them," he says, " but could not take any 
of the men on account of their quickness in climbing, but 
we took three women, who bit and tore those who carried 
them off, so that we were obliged to kill them. We then 
skinned them and carried their skins home with us." 
Two of these, stuffed, were placed by Hanno in the 
temple of Astarte at Carthage, where they remained till 
that city was captured by the Romans. 

The extent of Africa inhabited by this animal is not 
large, only including the forest region, extending inland 
between the mouths of the Cameroon and Congo Rivers 

Its smaller cousin, the chimpanzee, is found over a 
much wider range, namely, from the Gambia to the 
Benguela, extending inland as far as 28° East longitude. 
The earliest notice of what was probably this animal 

* "Ann. des Sc. Nat. " (third series), Zoology, vol xvi., 1851 
pp. 184-188. 



10 TFPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

appeared in a description of the kingdom of Congo by 
Pigafetta in 1598, published at Frankfort. A further 
notice appeared in a curious book, entitled ''Purchas: 
His Pilgrimage," in 161 3; but in the last year of the 
same seventeenth century a full and accurate account of 
the structure of the chimpanzee, with excellent plates, 
was published in London by Tyson under the title 
*' Anatomie of a Pigmie." 

The gorilla has been hardly seen in Europe, though a 
specimen lived for a time in the Westminster Aquarium, 
and in Berlin; but the much smaller chimpanzee has 
often been exhibited alive in London, and is an attractive 
feature in menageries, not only from its resemblance to 
a child deformed by preternatural wrinkles of age, but 
also from its hveliness and the facility with which it 
acquires a number of playful tricks. 

There was till lately a chimpanzee, known as " Sally," 
at the London Zoological Gardens which was in three 
ways remarkable. To begin with, it was the best grown 
and largest specimen which has hved in Europe ; secondly, 
it differed from all before known ones by its carnivo- 
rous habits. It would greedily seize and devour small 
birds, whereas such apes were previously supposed to be 
naturally vegetarians only. But it was, in the third place, 
most remarkable for the tricks it acquired. It would 
separately pick up from the ground, place in its mouth, 
and then present in one bunch, two, three, four, or five 
straws, as might be demanded of it, or only one. It had dis- 
tinctly associated the several sounds of these numbers with 
corresponding groups of picked-up straws. It would also, 
on command, pass a straw through a large or small hole 
in the fastening of its cage or through a particular inter- 
space of its wire netting. Finally, it would, when so 
bidden, put objects into its keeper's pocket, play various 



MONKEYS II 

odd tricks with boy visitors, and howl horribly when told 
to sing. 

A great contrast to the African chimpanzee is pre- 
sented by the third anthropoid form of ape, the Asiatic 
orang. It is red instead of blackish in colour, and its 
arms are so long that they reach to the ankle when the 
animal stands erect. This it rarely, if ever, does spon- 
taneously. It w^alks resting on its knuckles and the 
outer edges of its feet, their soles being turned inward. 
Thus resting on its hands, it uses its arms as a pair of 
crutches, swinging the body and legs forward betw^een 
them. Its disposition is also very different from that 
of the lively and petulant chimpanzee. Remarkably 
calm, not to say languid, in its actions, it has in captivity 
a curiously melancholy demeanour. Its high rounded 
forehead, very different from the villanously low brows 
of the chimpanzee and the gorilla, gives it a singularly 
intellectual aspect, so that when we observe it pensively 
squatting, with fat belly — like an image of G-autama — we 
might fancy that the mind of some esoteric Buddhist 
was imprisoned within the apish body, incapable of 
making its latent existence known, and mutely contem- 
plating the longed-for Nirvana. 

The orang is found nowhere in the world except in 
Sumatra and Borneo, and even there only in lowland 
humid forests, which supply it at once with shelter and 
the vegetable food it loves. A solitary and peaceful 
animal, it is ordinarily very slow and deliberate in its 
movements. Nevertheless, w^hen attacked, it can defend 
itself with alacrity and effect, as the following anecdote 
(from Wallace's " Malay Archipelago ") will show : " A 
few miles down the river there is a Dyak house, and the 
inhabitants saw a large orang feeding on the young 
shoots of a palm by the river-side. On being observed, 



12 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

he retreated towards the jungle, which was close by, and 
a number of the men, armed with spears and choppers, 
ran out to intercept him. The man who was in front 
tried to run his spear through the animal's body, but the 
orang seized it in his hands, and in an instant got hold 
of the man's arm, which he seized in his mouth, making 
his teeth meet in the flesh above the elbow, which he 
tore and lacerated in a dreadful manner. Had not the 
others been close behind, the man would have been more 
seriously injured, if not killed, as he was quite powerless : 
but they soon destroyed the creature with their spears 
and choppers. The man remained ill for a long time, 
and never fully recovered the use of his arm." 

The only other specially man-like, or anthropoid, apes 
are the long-armed apes or gibbons. They are generally 
much less thought of by the public than those more cele- 
brated creatures, the gorilla, chimpanzeee, and orang. 
Nevertheless, they present several points of great inte- 
rest, and in some respects more resemble ourselves than 
does any one of the three kinds just mentioned. The 
gibbons are smaller creatures, but are all as completely 
destitute of a tail as are their three more renowned rela- 
tives. The largest gibbon stands about three feet high from 
head to heel. There are several species, but they vary 
so much in colour, according to age, sex, and other con- 
ditions, that they cannot yet be said to be very well- 
defined. They range over south-eastern Asia, and 
at present are nowhere else found; but in Tertiary 
times a gibbon, much larger than any now existing, 
roamed through the forests of the south of France. 
Though some are to be found in India, and others in 
Burmah, Malacca, and Siam, their special abode is the 
Indian Archipelago, in the great islands of Borneo, 
Sumatra, Java, and in others, for they are there widely 



MONKEYS 13 

diffused, save in the Philippine Islands. Their agility is 
most wonderful. They will swing themselves from 



Fig. I 




th£ siamang gibbon. 



14 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

branch to branch by their long arms, with such amazing 
rapidity that they seem almost to fly through the forest. 
We have often watched their wonderful motions in a 
large cage specially provided at the Zoological Gardens. 
We have also listened to the remarkable manlike sounds 
they emit (as before said) when singing or shouting, as 
they so often do. In spite of their great activity these 
animals are exceedingly gentle and make excellent pets, 
although they can inflict terrible wounds with their 
elongated canine teeth. The siamang (Fig. i), which is 
the largest of the gibbons, inhabits Sumatra, and goes 
about in troops there, making the woods re-echo morning 
and evening with its deafeningly sonorous cries. 

The gibbons have arms so long that they reach the 
ground while the body is perfectly erect. This extreme 
elongation of the arms tends to prevent our noticing the 
really great proportional length of their legs. In nothing 
do the gorilla, chimpanzee, and orang dilSer from man in 
structure more notably than in the shortness of their 
lower limbs. The gibbons go to an extreme the other 
way, for if the leg be compared with the body as to its 
length, then the gibbons have even slightly longer legs 
than man himself. This is a ver}'' noteworthy approxi- 
mation to human structure. There is yet another. We 
have already said that only one monkey, a gibbon, has a 
chin. That monkey is the just mentioned siamang. 
Its chin is more developed than is that of not a few 
human beings. In spite of these approximations they 
have one noteworthy falling off behind. The body 
is bare where it rests on the ground in a sitting posture, 
and the hardened naked patches of skin thus situated 
are spoken of as ischiatic callosities on account of the 
bones (ischia) which they invest. In possessing these 
callosities they agree with all the other monkeys of the 



MONKEYS 15 

Old World, save the gorilla, chimpanzee, and orang, 
which have them not. Neither have any American 
apes, which, more decorous than their Transatlantic 
brethren, have that region of the body copiously clothed 
with hair. 

Leaving now the anthropoid apes, with which alone 
we have been hitherto occupied, we find when we pass to 
the next group of monkeys a remarkably different aspect 
and a very different form of body. The limbs are nearly 
of equal length, but the arms are now the shorter ones, 
so that a quadrupedal mode of progression on the ground 
is natural to them. Nevertheless, they are arboreal 
animals, and both adroit climbers and dexterous jumpers. 
They are aided in keeping their balance during their 
movements by the possession of a long tail. 

The first group of these monkeys is one which is found 
only in central and south-eastern Asia, and consists of 
many species which also have their headquarters in the 
Indian Archipelago. They are not very often seen in 
captivity save that well-known kind, the entellus monkey 
or hounaman, which is an object of such religious vene- 
ration on the part of the Hindoos. It has a coat of 
whitish hair but a jet-black face, and once seen is not 
likely to be forgotten. The largest and by far the most 
singular species of the group, however, has never been 
seen alive in Europe. It is exclusively a native of 
Borneo, where it can hardly be common, since, though it 
was figured and described by Buffon in 1789, it has 
found its way to no menagerie. This very remarkable 
beast is the kahau or proboscis monkey (Fig. 2), which 
differs from every other ape in having a long projecting 
nose. Two fine stuffed specimens of this creature are to be 
seen in the British Museum, one young, the other adult. 
The young of this species instead of having a nose similar 



1 6 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

to that of the adult save as regards size, have it rela- 
tively much shorter, and also turned upward. A zealous 




THE PROBOSCIS MONKEY. 



and learned Lazarist missionary, a Frenchman, the Eev. 
Father David, has made many important zoological dis- 



MONKEYS 17 

coveries in central Asia. There, high up in the cold 
forests of Monpin, in Thibet, he found an ape clothed 
with dense fur, suitable for its frigid abode. It lives in 
a region where frost and snow last several months in 
the year, and where it has little to eat but the shoots 
and twigs of trees. Nevertheless, this ape, living in a 
region so remote from Borneo, with its hot, humid 
forests, is very like the young form of the proboscis 
monkey. It differs from the latter, however, in having 
a nose turned up to the highest possible degree, on which 
account its describer. Prof. Alphonse Milne Edwards, 
named it " the monkey of RoxaUana," in honour of that 
" tip-tilted " imperial beauty. 

The Indian monkeys, which in general structure are 
most like the kahau and the entellus, are closely re- 
sembled by the species of an African group, the members 
of which are called colobi. These African apes have had 
a too fatal popularity, the glossy coats of their well- 
clothed skins having been for a time the favourite 
material for ladies' muffs, the well-known *' monkey 
muffs." Several species of colobi are very notable for 
their wonderfully handsome fur fringes or tippets of long 
white hair, accompanying a general livery of the deepest 
black. Their Indian alHes have very feebly developed 
thumbs, but the colobi are remarkable for having no 
thumbs at all. A specimen presenting this condition of 
hand may well seem to a non-scientific observer as one 
accidentally or purposely mutilated. We recollect a few 
years ago having our attention arrested by two very fine 
specimens of this genus which we saw mounted in a 
tobacconist's window in London. To our surprise we 
observed that they had thumbs, and so we at once 
entered the shop, and asked to be allowed to inspect 
tliem. We then found that artificial thumbs had been 

B 



i8 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

sewed on, and the proprietor of the shop admitted that 
he had had this done to restore the specimens to 
what he supposed must have been their natural con- 
dition ! 

It is often assumed that wild animals escape most of 
the evils to which civilised human flesh is heir. No 
doubt in most cases when such creatures are sufferers 
from disease, merciful Nature calls in her destructive 
powers to make a speedy end of their sufferings. Never- 
theless, skeletons in our museums show that these apes, 
in their hot, damp native forests, do occasionally suffer 
severely from acute rheumatism. 

The two sets of long-tailed apes just noticed, form 
together one very natural and distinct- section or sub- 
family of the ape order. With the exception of the 
lofty region of Thibet, they are confined to the warmer 
parts of Africa and Asia, although in Miocene times they 
ranged through Europe from Greece to Montpellier, if 
not farther north. 

The next sub-family of monkej^s to be here noticed is 
one which is no less distinct, though the forms it contains 
are more varied. In it we find, as it were, a sliding 
scale of forms descending from graceful little African 
monkeys, such as the Diana monkey, the Mona or the 
white-nosed monkey, to the largest and most brutal of 
the baboons. The whole sub-family is imperfectly 
divisible into three groups. The first of these is made 
up of species exclusively African, such as the three kinds 
above mentioned, and their allies. The Diana monkey 
is so called from its white concentric band of hair above 
the forehead. The Mona is remarkable for its brilliant 
coloration, its head being yellowish olive with a black 
stripe on the forehead, yellow whiskers, and a purple 
face The back is chestnut brown, and there is a white 



MONKEYS 19 

spot on each side of the root of the tail, which is black. 
Various species of this group are distinguished by curious 

Fig. 3. 




THE WHITE-NOSED MONKEY. 



markings on the face. The white-nosed monkeys are 
very attractive, generally gentle animals, and most easy 
to distinguish by the character their name denotes. The 



±6 Types of animal life 

moustache monkeys have a hardly less conspicuous stripe 
where the moustache should be. Other monkeys of western 
Africa are singularly distinguished by having the eyelids 
white, though the rest of the face is dark, and they are 
named accordingly " white-eyelid monkeys." The com- 
monest of the whole group is the green monkey, which 
now inhabits the Cape Yerd Islands, and which has 
also been introduced and has run wild in one of the 
Antilles. 

All these African monkeys have long tails and ischiatic 
callosities. They also have better developed thumbs than 
the Asiatic ones of the group containing the entellus, and 
they introduce us to a new character. If a visitor to a 
menagerie presents one of these smalL African monkeys 
with first one and then another nut, the nuts will not 
at once be cracked and eaten, but will be put successively 
inside the cheeks, which will be observed to protrude 
in a remarkable manner. These dilatable face pockets 
are called cheek-pouches. Nothing of the kind is pos- 
sessed by any of the higher Old World apes, though their 
possession is a constant character not only of the group we 
are now considering, but also of all the Old World monkeys 
which yet remain for us to notice, and which may be taken 
to constitute two more groups. The fii'st of them is entirely 
confined to the continent of Asia, with the one exception 
of the Barbary ape, which also lives on the rock of 
Gibraltar. The existing specimens there abiding are, 
however, either individuals which have been of late re- 
introduced from Africa, or they are the ofispring of such. 
The Barbary ape, or "magot," has a special interest, 
from the fact that a time when prejudice did not allow 
the human body to be used for medical study and dis- 
section, the body of that ape was employed as a substitute, 
as very old -anatomical works conclusively prove. The 



MONKEYS 



remaining, and exclusively Asiatic, members of the group 
are known as ''macaques." Some of them have long 



Fig. 4. 




THE WANDEROO. 



tails, some short tails, and a few, like the Bavbary ape, 
have none. They extend farther north than other 
monkeys, namely, to Japan and northern China, and one 



22 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

species was found by Father David at Moupin in Thibet. 
Including the Barbary apes, this group may be said to 
be most widely spread of all those which compose the 
monkey order, extending in one direction from Gibraltar 
and northern China, down to the island of Timor and 



Fig. 




THE BLACK MACAQUE. 

the Cape of Good Hope, and in another direction from 
north-western Africa to Bata\da, Japan, and the Philip- 
pine Islands in the east. In ancient times this genus 
extended into France, and even to England. One Indian 
species, called the wanderoo (Fig. 4), has the face encircled 
by very long hairs, which gives the ape a very conspicuous 
and characteristic appearance. It is also somewhat 



MONKEYS 



23 



distinguished as regards its domestic habits, if there 
be truth in the following singular reproach cast upon 
the Yeddahs of India by some of their fellow-countrymen : 
" The Yeddahs are like wanderoos : they have only one 
wife!" 

Fig. 5.1. 




THE CHACMA. 



In the island of Celebes an exceptional kind of ape is 
found called " the black macaque," which by its struc- 
ture leads us on to the lowest group of Old World species, 
the baboons, in spite of the remoteness of the region it 
inhabits from that which is their home. The baboons 
are exclusively inhabitants of Africa and of Arabia — 
which is considered, as regards its animal population, to 



24 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

really form a part of Africa. The baboons are the 
largest apes, after the anthropoid ones. They are also the 
most quadrupedal in their mode of propulsion, and have 
by far the most prominent muzzle, being known as the 
cynocephali, or dog-headed apes. The ape with the most 
exaggerated snout is the chacma (Fig. 5a) of South Africa. 
It is a very powerful brute, which lives in troops among 
rocks, and, though mainly a vegetable feeder, will also 
eat eggs, large insects, and scorpions, which it is said 
to deprive of their sting by a very sudden and dexterous 
pinch. 

One of the most singular of the baboons is the 
mandrill, which exceeds the chimpanzee in bulk of body, 
It is remarkable for the brilliant coloration of its face, 
the cheeks being brilliant blue^ the nose vermilion, and 
the beard golden yellow. It was an example of this species 
which, in the earlier years of this century,, was known at 
Exeter Change as " Happy Jerry," and used to smoke his 
pipe and drink his glass of gin and water before admiring 
visitors. The venerable reHcs of this felicitous ape are 
still carefully preserved in the national collection at the 
British Museum. 

With the baboons, we end the series of Old World 
forms. In America we can find nothing which at all 
closely resembles them. It has been suggested that the 
howling monkeys, the largest in bulk, may be taken as 
the representatives in the I^qw World of the baboons of 
the Old, but we know nothing, either in their organisation 
or their habits, which really warrants the suggestion. 
Instead of being rock dwellers and quadrupedal in their 
locomotion, howling monkeys are extremely arboreal, 
and are one of those groups which, as before observed, are 
furnished with a perfectly prehensile tail. As their 
name implies, they are most noted for their prodigious 



MONKEYS 



cries, which are said to be sometimes almost deafening. 
A curious modification of structure goes with this por- 



FiG. 6. 




THE LONG-HAIRED SPIDER MONKEY. 

tentous clamour. At the root of the tongue in ourselves, 
and in beasts generally, is a small, solid, transversely 



26 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

extended bone. In these apes the bone in question is of 
enormous size, as it were swollen into a great bony bladder 
with very thin walls. There can be little doubt but that 
the resonance of their voice is enormously augmented by 
this bony drum. In captivity, howling monkeys seem 
sullen and morose, and, though not petulant, have none of 
that gentle amiability which is to be found among the 
next group of American apes, the spider monkeys. 

These latter (Fig. 6) are no less wonderfully adapted for 
tree life, while they are more active, and seem to represent 
to a certain extent in the New World, the long-armed apes 
of the Old, although they are very slow animals compared 
with the gibbons. Long arms they have indeed, and 
also legs, whence their name ; but the former do not 
predominate over the latter at all, as in the gibbons. So 
powerful is the grip of the spider monkey's prehensile 
tail, and so dexterously is it used, that not only can 
the animal's whole body be sustained by means of 
it, but it even serves as a fifth hand, grasping and 
bringing to the mouth or paws objects otherwise out of 
reach. Their prehension in some other respects is sin- 
gularly defective, as they alone among American monkeys 
resemble the colobi of Africa, in having no thumbs, or 
only a minute rudiment of one. They have no cheek 
pouches, nor has any other New World ape, and no one 
of them (as has been abeady mentioned) has ischiatic 
callosities. 

Certain monkeys known as woolly monkeys closely 
resemble those just described, save that they have well- 
developed thumbs. 

Next comes the group composed of those commonest 
and most frequently seen of the New World apes, the 
sapajous, already referred to as being so much in request 
for tricks and exhibitions. They are considerably 



MONKEYS 27 

smaller in size than the spider or howling monkeys, and 
make good pets, grinning with the most curious grimaces 
and uttering flute-like sounds when responding to 
caresses or endearments. They are very numerous, and 
there are probably at least some twenty different species, 
though they vary so remarkable in colour that their real 
number is b}' no means satisfactorily determined. It is 
possible that in the sapajous and in the howling monkeys 
we have groups of animals wherein new species are now in 
actual process of formation. That careful naturalist. 
Dr. E-engger, managed to obtain some rare opportunities 
of observing these watchful, timid animals in Paraguay, 
which is about their southern boundary. He tells us that 
they spend their Kves almost constantly in trees, which 
they only quit to drink at some spring or stream, or to 
forage in some tempting field of maize. Sleeping at night 
between conveniently branching twigs, they pass the day 
ranging from tree to tree in search of fruit, buds, insects, 
honey, or for some nest's eggs or callow brood, going 
about in family groups of from five to ten individuals. 
On one occasion a large troop approached him while he 
was hidden from their observation. First came an old 
male, passing from one tree's summit to another, and 
keeping a careful look-out in all directions. He was 
followed by about a dozen others of both sexes, three of 
the females each carrying a young one on the back or under 
the arm. One monkey quickly espying a neighbouring 
orange-tree covered with ripe fruit, with a loud cry 
sprang upon it, followed by all the others, who imme- 
diately fell to work, some remaining on it to enjoy their 
feast, while others retreated to adjoining trees, there to 
enjoy in quiet the booty they had secured. Sapajous 
are to be found in every menagerie, and if one happens 
to be observed in proximity to one of the Asiatic or 



28 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

African monkeys, the characteristic difference between the 
countenance of Old and New World species will be at 
once apparent. In those of the Old World the nose is 
not only (save in the proboscis monkeys) very small, but 
also very narrow, its nostrils being in close proximity. 
In the sapajou and the New World forms, however, the 
nose is remarkably broad, the two nostrils being widely 
separated. In leaving the sapajous we bid adieu to the 
groups furnished with prehensile tails, and come upon a 
very different set of forms, which terminate the order 
of apes. 

First we may notice the group of monkeys of about 
the size of sapajous, and known as sakis. They are 
somewhat widely spread over the South American con- 
tinent, but are nowhere very abundant, living in pairs, 
alone, or accompanied by their young. They are gentle, 
timid animals, which sleep much by day and go abroad 
at night, thus escaping the persecution they would other- 
wise suffer from the oppression of the more active and 
powerful sapajous. Sakis are seldom seen alive in 
captivity, but several of them are very singular in 
appearance. One is kno\vn as the "Capuchin," on 
account of its brown colour and long beard; while 
another kind, also provided with a beard, has, on account 
of its fine black colour, been called the Satanic saki. 
Another species is black, with a white head, while 
another has its pate more or less bald (Fig. 7). This last- 
mentioned kind agrees with some others in having a very 
short tail. In this they differ not only from the other 
sakis, but from all the rest of the monkeys of America, 
every one of which is provided with an elongated caudal 
appendage. One of these exceptional apes has the tail 
not only extremely short, but furnished with long hair, 
so th it it forms a prominent ball which would serve as 



MONKEYS 



29 



an excellent " dress improver," were there only a dress to 
improve. It inhabits the upper part of the enormous 
valley of the Amazon. The young traveller, Deville, 
whose premature death was a sad loss to science, tells us 



Fig. 7. 




THE BALD-HEADED SAKI. 

that a specimen of this species which he captured had 
the frequent habit of rising spontaneously and walking 
erect, and that it soon learnt to drink from a glass held 
in its hand, drinking regularly twice a day. It was very 
fond of milk, bananas, and sweetmeats, but had, unlike 
" Happy Jerry," a horror of tobacco, snatching a cigar 



30 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

from the mouth of any one who sent smoke towards it 
and grinding it on the ground. When several bananas 
were given it, it held one with its hands and the rest 
with its feet. It was gentle and affectionate to its 
master and some others, and liked to lick their hands or 
face; but it was very hostile to a young Indian, and 
when in a passion would rub its hands together with 
extreme rapidity. 

The douroucoulis, or night apes, are, as their name 
implies, truly nocturnal animals, passing the whole day 
rolled up asleep, within some hollow tree. Their great 
eyes, which are said to be luminous at night, seem to 
suffer much from strong daylight. Humboldt, who kept 
one for five months, tells us that it slept regularly for 
from between some time after dawn (at nine o'clock at the 
latest) till seven in the evening. At night they are as 
active as other apes are by day, and will make a great noise 
with their cries. They are reported to be exemplary 
monogamists. 

We have more than once spoken of those graceful 
little animals, the squirrel monkeys or " saimiris." They 
are slender in form, with pretty rounded faces and long 
heads, which contain more brains in proportion to their 
bulk than does the skull of man himself. Their brilliant 
colouring also makes them attractive, and they are said to 
be affectionate and sensitive as well as gentle, their eyes 
filling with tears if treated harshly. They are greedy 
pursuers of insects, and have a somewhat singular taste, 
as spiders, which they are very dexterous in catching, are 
their supreme delight. 

The last set of monkeys we have to enumeiate is 
one which differs greatly from all those hitherto 
noticed. It is composed of the marmosets, or ouistitis, 
a numerous group of very small animals exclusively 



MONKEYS 31 

confined to the warmer parts of America. All the 
monkeys yet described by us have nails, which, though 
more convex and pointed than those of man, are never- 
theless substantially like his. The marmosets, however, 
have all their fingers and toes provided with long pointed 



Fig 




THE SQUIRREL MONKEY. 

claws, with the single exception of the nail of each great 
toe, which is flattened like our own. All the monkeys 
hitherto noticed, except the colobi and spider monkeys, 
which have no thumb at all, have a thumb which is more 
or less opposable to the fingers, although very imperfectly 
so in the American forms. The thumbs of the marmosets, 



32 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

however, are not opposable at all. The monkeys hitherto 
noticed, whether they have five or six grinding teeth 
on either side of each jaw, all agree with us in having 
three grinders, which have no milk predecessors, and are 
technically known as true molars. But the marmosets 
alone have only two such on either side of either jaw. 

Various species of this pigmy group, each about the 
size of a squirrel, or even smaller, are remarkable for the 
beauty of their furry coat. Thus the "marikina," or 
silky marmoset, is clothed with fur of a golden yellow, 
that of the head and shoulders being long and forming a 
sort of mane. The pinche has the hair of the head 
greatly elongated. Another kind has a dark body, 
while the hands and feet are clothed w^ith bright red 
hair. Several species have a long tuft of hair projecting 
outward from either side of the head. 

We have compared these animals with squirrels as 
regards their size, but they may be similarly compared 
with respect to their movements among trees, to which 
they cling with their sharp-pointed claws, just as squirrels 
do. But though they thus resemble squirrels as to their 
mode of motion, their activity is by no means so great. 
They live in small troops, feeding on fruit and insects, 
which, like the saimiris, they eat greedily. They are 
very delicate in constitution, so that when brought into 
northern chmes they generally live but a short time. 
Nevertheless, they occasionally breed in Europe, and 
bring forth as many as three at a birth, while all the 
other apes habitually bring foith but one. The father 
shares, at least sometimes, the mother's parental cares 
with great amiabihty, taking the young ones from her 
and carrying them about, when she is fatigued, till they 
need another supply of food. 

With this notice of the marmosets ends our short 



MONKEYS 33 

review of the entire group of apes, an order of animals 
consisting, as we have said, of two sections, each made 
lip of the various subordinate groups which have now 
been enumerated and briefly noticed. Considered as 
one whole, the ape order ranges through the warmer 
part of the earth, from G-ibraltar and northern China, 
to the Cape of Good Hope and the Island of Timor, in 
the Old World, and from 23° North latitude to about 30° 
South latitude in the New World. Individuals of the 
entellus monkey group have been seen near Simla at an 
altitude of 11,000 feet. Some of the localities richest in 
monkeys are islands, as Ceylon, Borneo, Sumatra, Java, 
Fernando Po, and Trinidad. 

There are, however, certain islands which seem 
eminently well suited to support a large ape population, 
where apes are, nevertheless, conspicuous by their 
absence. Such are Madagascar, New Guinea, and the 
West Indies. Moreover, no ape is found even in the 
most tropical or best wooded parts of Australia. It is 
the more remarkable that no ape should be found in the 
great island of Madagascar, so rich in forests, seeing that 
it is the special home of those beasts, before referred to, 
named lemurs, which have generally been supposed to be 
very closely related to the apes. 

In one or two of the West Indian islands monkeys 
have been introduced and have run wild, showing that 
they could very well have lived there had they been able 
to enter the Antilles without the aid of man. Trinidad 
is not a West Indian island. It is a detached portion of 
the South American continent. 

We come now to the question concerning the existence 
of any special resemblance between these animals and some 
other given order of beasts. This is a problem by no means 
easy to answer. As we have said, apes are commonly 

c 



34 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

thought to be most nearly approached by the lemurs, but 
the advance of anatomical knowledge hardly favours that 
view. Such resemblance is mainly due to the formation 
of the extremities. Lemurs, with one exception, certainly 
have opposable thumbs and great toes to both hands and 
feet ; but opossums have feet with opposable gi^eat toes, 
and yet no one supposes that there is even the faintest 
special affinity between an ape and an opossum. In 
brain structure and in the more intimate processes of 
reproduction (generally deemed a valuable test of affinity) 
the apes and lemurs stand far apart ; and on the principles 
of evolution we are convinced that there can be no close 
relationship between them, although it has been hastily 
assumed that lemurs were the direct ancestors of apes. 
Apes, in the present day, stand as it were on a sort of 
zoological island, and we have no clear evidence indicating 
from what neighbouring strand they may be conceived 
to have entered upon it. Their origin thus still remains 
wrapped in mystery. Nor is it clear that the apes of the 
New World and those of the Old ever had any ape 
ancestors common to both. Possibly further discoveries 
in the Eocene deposits of North America (which are 
such veritable treasure-houses of relics of ancient 
life) will reveal to us the past existence of tran- 
sitional forms between the monkeys of America and of 
Asia and Africa; but, in spite of all that has been 
published, this has not, to our minds, been done, and 
we think it quite possible that these two families have 
had different origins, and have come to resemble each 
other independently. The possibility of "the indepen- 
dent origin of similar structures" is a doctrine we main- 
tained in the first work we ever published, and increased 
knowledge and experience has more and more convinced 
us we were right in maintaining it. But whether the 



MONKEYS 35 

monteys now existing on both sides of the Atlantic have 
had a single or a bifold origin, there can be no question 
but that they together constitute one very distinct and 
natural group, a group which, on account of the obvious 
and unquestionably close resemblance to ourselves of the 
creatures which compose it, must be ranked in the highest 
order of animals which exists, or, so far as we know, has 
ever existed. 



IT 
THE OPOSSUM 

What is an opossum ? That is a question well worth 
answering. 

Opossums are animals which should possess a special 
interest for Americans, seeing that though the bulk 
of the species inhabit quite another quarter of the 
globe, it was nevertheless America which first made 
known to us any one of them. The one which was 
then first made known has, however, claims on the 
attention of dwellers on both sides of the North Atlantic. 
This claim is based on the fact that in very ancient times, 
as the immortal Cuvier discovered, it was an inhabitant 
of Europe. 

It was in Paris (at Montmartre) that were first found 
the relics of these ancient animals, which still have 
living representatives in America. To these still living 
animals and to their allies we now propose to direct the 
readers' attention by doing our best to present them 
with an answer to our initial question, "What is an 
Opossum " ? 

Doubtless most readers have some notion of the 
animal, which is still to be found in the south-eastern 
parts of the United States, and is known as the Vir- 
ginian opossum; nevertheless, a few descriptive words 
may not be out of place here. 

It is about the size of a cat, with a pointed head and 



THE OPOSSUM 



37 



flesh-coloured nose, and generally white head and more 
or less black ears. The tail is about as long as the body, 
clothed with fur for nearly a quarter of its length, the 
rest being naked and covered with scales like the tail of 
Fig. 




THE VIRGINIAN OPOSSUM. 

a rat. But, unlike the tail of a rat, it is prehensile, thus 
resembling the tails of various American monkeys. 

The body is clothed with long, loose, rather soft hairs 
some white, some black, some parti-coloured. Beneath 
the hinder part of the body there is, in the female, a 



38 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

pouch, wherein are the nipples — an odd one in the 
middle, the rest forming a circle round it. 

The soles of the paws are naked, and all the toes have 
claws except the inner one of the hind foot, which is 
clawless, and acts like a thumb. In the front of the 
jaws are ten small teeth above and eight below, and there 
are seven grinders on either side of each jaw, one more 
wisdom tooth than even any American ape has. 

The opossum is very destructive to poultry, but it robs 
birds' nests and feeds on fruit, its tail and hind feet 
being as well suited for climbing trees as those of the 
spider monkey. The expression " playing 'possum " refers 
to its habit of feigning death when pursued and over- 
taken. We have been assured that it will on such occa- 
sions endure much pain before it will exhibit any signs 
of life. The female brings forth from twelve to sixteen 
young, making a nest of dry grass in some hollow tree, 
or at a convenient spot among a tree's boughs. The new- 
born young are said to weigh scarcely more than a grain. 
Though they are naked, blind, and little defined in shape, 
they manage to find the mother's teats, to which they 
attach themselves firmly. 

In about five days they grow to the size of a mouse 
and become shapely. Soon they will quit the pouch for 
a time, returning if frightened, and also to feed. While 
thus sheltering her young the mother will endure any 
torture rather than allow her pouch to be opened. 

After this preliminary notice of the creature called 
the opossum, we may proceed to consider what its nature 
is, and wherein its most interesting pecuharities, as re- 
vealed by modern science, really consist. 

When America was first visited by the explorers who 
succeeded Columbus, the opossum was noted as among 
its novelties, by II . Hamor in his description of Yirginia, 



THE OPOSSUM 39 

and by Hernandez, whose history of Mexico was printed 
in 1626, and by many others. But not then or till more 
than 200 years afterward did even men of science ap- 
preciate how great a novelty had been met with in this 
new animal. The habit of carrying its young in a 
pouch, and the fact that the hind paw (as in monkeys) 
w^as formed like a hand, were duly noted. The anatomy 
of a female specimen was described by Tyson in 1698 
under the title of the " Anatomie of the Oposum," the 
year before he published his " Anatomie of a Pigmie," 
referred to before. A male specimen was also described 
by William Cooper in 1704. But however fully the 
creature's structure was investigated, the significance of 
its organisation remained hidden from men's eyes. 

The exceptional nature of those flying beasts, the bats, 
was appreciated early, but not that of those marine 
beasts, the whales and porpoises. At the coronation 
feast of King Kichard II., which took place in West- 
minster Hall on a Friday, roast porpoise figured on 
the board among the other dishes to be eaten on a 
day of abstinence, when flesh meat was forbidden food. 
Little did the first observers of the opossum imagine 
that the difference between a bat and a mouse, or that 
between a porpoise and a sheep, was as nothing compared 
with the difierence which existed between the opossum 
and the racoon, or between the opossum and any other 
beast then known in Europe or America. 

In order that this should be understood it needed that 
other creatures more or less allied to the opossum should 
be elsewhere discovered. The first sign of the coming 
revelation was the mistaken opinion that the opossum ex- 
isted in the East Indies. Pison, in his history of Brazil, 
says that such a breed was called " cous-cous ; " and 
Seba, in the middle of the eighteenth century, stated 



40 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

that an animal of the kind had been sent him from 
Amboyna, where its name was "coes-coes." For this, 
Buffon, in the tenth volume (1763) of his "Natural 
History," takes Seba roundly to task, asserting that 
the animal may have been first sent to Amboyna from 
America. 

Yet earlier, in 17 11, a Dutch traveller, Cornelius de 
Bruins, saw a creature which we now know to have been 
a kind of kangaroo. This was at Batavia, where several 
kangaroos were kept in captivity. He gave a fairly 
good figure of it in that account of his travels through 
Muscovy, Persia, and India, which was published at 
Amsterdam in 17 14. This publication seems, however, 
to have excited little attention. 

Bather more than half a century after this work 
appeared, the Boyal Society of England took a step 
which was the starting-point of those discoveries which 
have resulted in enabling us at last to understand what 
an opossum really is. 

At the recommendation and request of the Boyal 
Society, Captain (then Lieutenant) Cook set sail in May 
1768, in the ship Endeavour, on a voyage of exploration, 
and for the observation of the transit of Venus of the 
year 1769, which transit the travellers observed from 
the Society Islands on June 3 of that year. 

Thus it was that 120 years ago a kangaroo was first 
observed distinctly and unequivocally by Englishmen. 
For, in the spring of 1770, Cook's ship started from 
New Zealand for the eastern part of New Holland, visit- 
ing, among other places, a spot which, on account of the 
number of plants found there by Mr. (afterward Sir 
Joseph) Banks, received the name of Botany Bay. Sub- 
sequently, when detained in Endeavour Eiver (about 15° 
South lat.), owing to the need of repairing a hole made 



THE OPOSSUM 41 

in the vessel by a rock (part of which, fortunately, itself 
stuck in the hole it made), Captain Cook tells us that 
on Friday, June 22, of that year, ''Some of the people 
were sent on the other side of the water, to shoot pigeons 
for the sick, who, on their return, reported that they 
had seen an animal, as large as a greyhound, of a slender 
make, a mouse colour, and extremely swift." With 
respect to the following day he tells us: ''This day 
almost everybody had seen the animal which the pigeon 
shooters had brought an account of the day before ; and 
one of the seamen, who had been rambling in the woods, 
told us on his return that he verily believed he had seen 
the devil. We naturally inquired in what form he had 
appeared, and his answer was, says John, * As large as a 
one-gallon keg, and very like it. He had horns and 
wdngs, yet he crept so slowly through the grass that if I 
had not been af eared, I might have touched him.' This 
formidable apparition we afterward, however, discovered 
to have been a bat. Early the next day," Captain Cook 
continues, " as I was walking in the morning at a little 
distance from the ship, I saw myself one of the animals 
which had been described. It was of a light mouse 
colour, and in size and shape very much resembling a 
greyhound. It had a long tail, also, which it carried 
like a greyhound, and I should have taken it for a wild 
dog if, instead of running, it had not leapt like a hare or 
deer." Mr. Banks also had an imperfect view of this 
animal, and was of opinion that its species was hitherto 
unknown. The work contains an excellent figure of 
the creature. Again, on Sunday, July 8, being still in 
Endeavour Eiver, Captain Cook tells us that some of the 
crew " set out with the first dawn in search of game, and 
in a walk of many miles they saw four animals of the same 
kind, two of which Mr. Banks's greyhound fairly chased, 



42 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

but they threw him out at a great distance by leaping 
over the long thick gi^ass, which prevented his run- 
ning. This animal was observed not to run upon four 
legs, but to bound or leap forward upon two, like the 
jerboa." Finally, on Saturday, July 14, "Mr. Gore, 
who went out with his gun, had the good fortune to kill 
one of these animals which had been so much the subject 
of our speculation ; " adding, " This animal is called by 
the natives kangaroo. The next day (Sunday, July 15) 
our kangaroo was dressed for dinner, and proved most 
excellent meat." Such is the earliest notice of this 
animal's observation by Englishmen. 

Thus were we introduced to the knowledge of a creature 
which at first could not be, and was not, expected to have 
any special affinity to an animal so unlike it externally, 
and an inhabitant of so distant a country, as is the 
Virginian opossum. 

As, however, the knowledge of Australia increased, it 
soon became evident that it was inhabited by a great 
number of various kinds of beasts, every one of which 
was quite different from all other beasts previously 
known, with the exception of some bats, a rat, and the 
AustraUan dog, the dingo. But, before proceeding to 
review the peculiar animals then discovered, it will be 
well briefly to take stock of all the various kinds of 
beasts previously known. All kinds of beasts taken 
together are considered by naturalists to form one class, 
the class of "backboned animals which suckle their 
young," or the class of mammals — mammalia. Other 
classes of backboned animals are birds, reptiles, and fishes. 
Every class is divisible into certain great groups called 
" orders," and in this way the class of beasts ls subdivided 
into a number of orders such as the following : — i. Apes. 
2. Bats. 3. Insectivorous beasts (such as the mole. 



THE OPOSSUM 43 

hedgehog, and shrew mouse). 4. Carnivorous beasts 
(such as the lion, dog, bear, otter). 5. Seals and sea-lions. 
6. Gnawing beasts or rodents (such as porcupines, hares 
and rabbits, rats, squirrels, jerboas, &c.). 7. Hoofed beasts 
(such as horses, swine, deer, oxen, antelopes, goats, sheep, 
camels, &c.). 8. That of elephants. 9. The order containing 
the dugong and manatee. 10. Whale sand porpoises. 
II. The order of sloths, ant-eaters, and armadillos, — 
called the order of edentates. Such were all the orders 
any one recognised when the kangaroo was discovered 
by Cook and Banks. We must for our present pur- 
pose call special attention to Nos. 3, 4, 6, 7, and 11 
of the above enumevated orders — namely, the orders 
of flesh-eating, insectivorous, gnawing and hoofed beasts, 
and the edentate order. Flesh -eating or carnivorous 
beasts have the teeth modified in a way of which 
those of the dog or cat may serve for types. In- 
sectivorous beasts have the grinding teeth bristling 
with sharp points, well calculated to pierce the firm 
envelope of an insect's body. The rodents, or gnawers, 
have teeth like those of the squirrel or marmot — that 
is to say, very few in front, and these separated by an 
interspace from grinders placed more posteriorly which 
are adapted to crush vegetable food. Some squirrels are 
known as flying squirrels, and take long jumps with the 
aid of an extension of the skin of either flank. The hoofed 
beasts have long legs adapted for getting quickly over 
the ground with a reduced number of toes to each foot. 
Lastly, such creatures as the ant-eaters have no teeth at 
all, but have a long, worm-like tongue, and very powerful 
claws, while the sloths have feet especially modified for 
sure and slow progression in trees. 

We may now turn to consider what the beasts 
were like which naturalists were astonished to find 



44 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

living in the fifth (Australian) " quarter of the 
world." 

In the first place, there was the wombat, a burrowing 
creature with squat body and an extremely short tail, 
not unlike a marmot. The apparent aflinity suggested 
by this external resemblance was confirmed when it was 
discovered that, like the marmot, and gnawing beasts 
generally, it had but a sing'e pair of cutting teeth above 
and below at the front of the jaws, and that these were 
separated by a long interspace from the teeth well 
adapted for grinding vegetable substances. Here was a 
creature which might well be taken to be a true 
rodent. 

It was originally described and figured in Col. Collins's 
account of the English colony of New South Wales in 
1802. He tells us that Mr. Bass, when on an island in 
the straits named after him, " Bass's Straits," observed 
one of these animals walking with its usual shuffling 
gait. Having overtaken it, he placed his hands under 
its belly, and, suddenly lifting it, placed it on his arm 
with its back downward, as if it had been a child. " It 
made no noise," Col. Collins tells us, '•' nor any effort to 
escape us, not even a struggle." Its countenance was 
placid and undisturbed, and it seemed as contented as if 
it had been nursed by Mr. Bass from its infancy. He 
carried the beast upwards of a mile and often shifted him 
from arm to arm, sometimes laying him upon his shoulder, 
all of which he took in good part, until, being obliged to 
secure his legs while he went into a bush to get a speci- 
men of a new wood, the creature's anger arose with the 
pinching of the twine, he whizzed with all his might, 
kicked and scratched most furiously, and snapped off a 
piece from the elbow of Mr. Bass's jacket with his grass- 
cutting teeth. Their friendship was here at an end, and 



THE OPOSSUM 



45 



the creature remained implacable all the way to the boat, 
ceasing to kick only when he was exhausted. In con- 
finement wombats are mostly gentle. They will eat all 
kinds of vegetables, and are particularly fond of new hay. 
Fig. io. 




THE VULPINE PHALANGER, 

One observed by Sir Everard Home was attached to 
those who were kind to it, and would put up its fore-paws 
on their knees, and when taken up would sleep in the 
lap. It allowed children to pull and carry it about, and 
if it bit at aU did not appear to do so from anger. 



46 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

Allied to the marmot-like wombat were various tree- 
frequenting animals, termed phalangers, which feed on 
leaves, buds, and fruit, some of which naturally recalled 
to mind flying squirrels, as they were found to be aided 
in their long jumps by a similar extension of the skin of 
the flanks to that which exists in such squirrels. Here 
then we have another approximation on the part of these 
Australian beasts to the long familiar order of gnawers 
or rodents. "We say "Australian," but although the 
first of these animals then discovered was found near 
Endeavour River, and named after Captain Cook, it was 
a closely allied form which Seba (as before mentioned) 
long before received from Amboyna, and regarded as the 
same animal as the American opossum. 

The mistake was in those early days of zoological 
science by no means wonderful, for these phalangers 
presented some very remarkable resemblances to the 
opossum. Thus in both there was a pouch in the female, 
in both the tail was prehensile, and in both the hind 
foot was like a hand, with a well-developed opposable 
thumb. But if we look closely at the hind foot, we may 
detect yet another and yet more exceptional character. 
The two toes which come next after the thumb-like 
great toe are much smaller than the outer pair and more 
closely bound together by skin. 

But another and very different set of beasts was also 
found in Australia. These soon gained the names of 
" native cats," " native devils," or *' wolves," as the case 
might be. They are bloodthirsty flesh-eating animals, 
some of which have been compared to weasels and 
martens, and, indeed, such is the general resemblance of 
these creatures to members of the long-known order of 
ordinary carnivorous beasts, that there is little wonder that 
even Baron Cuvier placed them within it. Most of them 



THE OPOSSUM 47 

agree mth the wolf and fox in having no " great toe" at 
all, while the other four toes of the hind foot are of 
nearly equal size. The largest of the group only inhabits 
Van Diemen's Land, and is known as the " Tasmanian 
wolf." Some of its teeth are quite like those of the true 
wolf, to which it was naturally at first thought to be 
more or less closely allied. Thus, if the wombat and pha- 
langers had some claim to be considered rodents, the 
creatures just noticed had at least as much claim to be 
included in the old order carnivora. Other beasts were 
Fig. II. 




THE TASMANIAN WOLF. 

found, however, which could advance similar claims to be 
associated with those before known insect-eating beasts, 
the insectivora, for, like the latter, their grinding tetih 
bristled with sharp points wherewith to pierce the hard 
skin in which most insects are encased. Some of these 
Australian insect-eaters are known as *'phascogales,"and 
are of the size of a rat, or yet smaller. Others are 
known as " bandicoots," and some of these exceed the 
hare in size. They are interesting, as we shall shortly 
see, because they have the hind limbs longer than the 



48 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

fore limb, and because the "great toe" is in them 
reduced to a small tubercle. In other respects also they 
present an exaggeration of characters before noticed as 
existing in the phalangers. Thus, their second and third 
toes are very minute and bound together by skin to the 
veiy claws, while the other two toes are exaggerated in 
size, especially the fourth toe. 

We must now return to the consideration of those 
Australian mammals, the kangaroos — animals which most 
of our readers have probably seen in confinement, or else 
know by report to be most expert and prodigious leapers. 
Some of them are very large animals, as bulky as deer, and 
rapidity of locomotion is especially necessary for a large 
animal which inhabits a country subject to such severe and 
widely extended droughts as is Australia. The herbivo- 
rous hoofed beasts which were till recently so numerous in 
the plains of southern Africa — the antelopes — are also 
capable of very rapid locomotion. In the antelopes, how- 
ever, as in all hoofed beasts, all the four limbs (front as 
well as hind) are exclusively used for locomotion. But in 
the kangaroos we have animals which require to use 
their front limbs for purposes of more or less delicate 
manipulation, with respect to the economy of the 
" pouch." Accordingly, for such creatures to be able to 
inhabit such a country, the hind limbs must by 
themselves answer the purpose of both the front and 
hind limbs of deer and antelopes. But the kangaroo's 
limbs are quite admirably suited to its needs. The front 
pair serve as prehensile manipulating organs, while the 
hind pair amply suffice to carry the animal over great 
distances and rapidly traverse wide, arid plains in pur- 
suit of rare and distant water. This harmony between 
structure, habit, and climate was long ago pointed out 
by Sir Kichard Owen. 



THE OPOSSUM 



49 



It might seem at first sight, then, that in the kangaroo 
we have a kind of creature allied to the hoofed beasts 
long before known, and only so far modified as to be in 
harmony with climatic needs. But the structure of 
its hind foot is alone sufficient to dispel such a notion. 
Each hind limb has, indeed (like that of an antelope or 

Fig. 12. 




THE KOALA. 



deer), but two large and conspicuous toes. But these 
are of unequal size, and the inner one, which is much the 
larger, bears a very long and strong claw. On the inner 
side of this large toe is what at first sight appears to be a 
very minute one, furnished with two claws side by side. 
An examination of the bones of the foot, however, shows 



50 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

that this apparently two -clawed toe, really consists of two 
very slender toes bound together in a common fold of skin. 
They are the toes that answer to the second and third 
toes of our own foot. Thus the kangaroo's hind foot, 
instead of being like that of the antelope, is a still further 
exaggeration of the foot of the bandicoot, just as that 
again is an exaggeration of the foot of the phalauger 
and the wombat. The really close relationship of these 
seemingly very different beasts is thus revealed. 

A very distinct and very curious animal was also 
found in Australia, which passes the greater part of its 
life clinging to the branches of trees. It is, like the 

Fig. 13. 




THE ECHIDNA. 

sloth of South America, slow in its movements, with a 
rounded head, long claws, a short body, and no tail. It 
is named the koala (Fig. 12), and eats the tender shoots of 
the blue gum-tree, feeding and sleeping at ease quite at 
the tops of the trees. It is very tenacious of life, and 
when even severely wounded will not quit its hold of the 
branch to which it may at the time be cHnging. It is 
no wonder that this animal was often called by the 
colonists in Australia the native sloth. 

Yet another strange animal was there discovered which 



THE OPOSSUM 51 

seemed to represent and belong to the before-named 
edentate order — that which contains the ant-eaters as well 
as the sloths. The animal we refer to is what we now call 
the echidna. It is a little larger than a hedgehog, and, 
like that animal, has its body protected by an investment 
of strong sharp-pointed spines. It has extremely power- 
ful claws, and its long and slender jaws are entirely 
toothless, but contain a very long, extensile, and worm- 
like tongue. It is not surprising that it was called by 
Shaw at the end of the last century a spiny ant-eater. 

The French naturalists, MM. Quoy and Guimard, pro- 
cured a specimen in Yan Diemen's Land, which they 
kept alive for some time. They describe it as an 
apathetic and stupid animal, and state that for the first 
month after its capture it took no sustenance whatever, 
but at the end of that time it began to lap, and finally 
to eat some food prepared for it, consisting of a mixture 
of flour, water, and sugar. It avoided the light, re- 
maining during the day partially rolled up with its head 
bent forward between its fore-legs. The rapidity with 
which it burrowed was astonishing. Being placed in a 
large cask full of earth, containing plants, it worked its 
way to the bottom in less than two minutes. Messrs. 
Bass and Flinders, who found one of these creatures, 
have related that their dogs could make no impression on 
it. It escaped from them by burrowing in the loose sand. 
It did not, however, do so head forward, but directly 
downward, thus presenting nothing but a prickly back 
to its adversaries as it descended. Another specimen 
was kept alive for some time by Lieut. Breton, who 
fed it on ants' eggs and milk. One kept in the Zoological 
Gardens in London was accustomed, when irritated, to 
roll itself up into a ball as a hedgehog does, the sharp 
points of its spikes then presenting themselves in all 



52 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

directions. When asleep it likewise rolled itself up. 
Of this specimen it was noted by Sir Richard Owen 
that its temperature was only 85° Fahrenheit, being 
nearly 10° lower than that of a rabbit. The resem- 
blance of this animal to an ant-eater is increased by 
the fact that in order to keep its long tongue constantly 
supplied with a viscous substance (so that ants may adhere 
to it), it has enormous spittle glands (for its secretion), 
which extend from behind the eye to the fore part of the 
chest. 

The females of all the animals from Australia and 
its vicinity which we have here noted are almost always 
provided, like the American opossum, with more or less 
of a pouch, and, whether they are so or^not, they are all 
distinguished by the possession of two bones, called 
" marsupial bones," which extend forward in the flesh 
of the belly from the front margin of that bony girdle, 
the pelvis, to which the hind legs are articulated. We 
• have said they exist in all. There is one exception : 
the Tasmanian wolf has this structure not in the con- 
dition of bone, but as two pieces of gristle, or cartilage. 

Now, the possession of these marsupial bones or 
cartilages is found to go along with a variety of other 
characters which it would be out of place to enumerate 
here, but which serve to mark off the creatures possessing 
them in a very sharp and distinct manner from all other 
beasts. One very important character concerns the 
reproductive function and structures concerned there- 
with, and so all naturalists are now agreed that these 
Australian beasts, together with the opossum of America, 
form one great natural division which may be called 
" marsupial." All the orders of beasts known before, and 
above enumerated, form, on the other hand, a much 
larger and yet parallel group of animals which, from 



The opossum ^3 

tkeir mode of reproduction, are known as "non-marsupial," 
and "placental." But our sliort survey has shown us 
that the marsupial beasts are very diverse in structure. 
They are so much so that they contain groups which 
run parallel with various orders of placental beasts, as 
follows : 

Placentals. Marsupials. 

Eodents (marmot, &c.). Wombat and its allies. 

Carnivora (cats, weasels, wolf, Native cats, weasels, and Tas- 

&c.). manian wolf. 

Insect-eaters, mole, «S:c. Phascogales and bandicoots. 

Hoofed beasts (deer and an- Kangaroos. 

telopes, &c.). 

Edentates (sloths and ant- Native sloth and echidna. 

eaters, &c.). 

Now, according to the doctrine of evolution, all existing 
species are the descendants of common ancestors, from the 
structure of which they in various degrees diverge ; and 
with regard to the origin of these two parallel series of 
marsupial and placental beasts, two hypotheses are open 
to us. One is that all beasts were at first of marsupial 
nature, and that the rodent, carnivorous, insectivorous, 
hoofed, and edentate placentals, are respectively the modi- 
fied offspring and descendants of the rodent, carnivorous, 
insectivorous, kangaroo -like, and edentate marsupials. 
But on this hypothesis it. is absolutely necessary that a 
number of very similar structures must be affirmed to 
have arisen independently. Such, in fact, must have 
been the case with regard to all those structural and 
functional characters by which the placental mammals 
agree to differ from all marsupials, since these characters 
must have similarly and separately arisen in each of 
these several groups, if we suppose the various groups of 
placentals to have severally descended independently from 
antecedent separate sets of marsupial forms. 



5^ TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

The other hypothesis is that the whole of one group 
descended from one small section of the other, either all 
placentals from some one marsupial species, or all mar- 
supials from one non-marsupial form. It is the latter 
hypothesis which is now in vogue, and the favourite 
opinion at present is that all marsupials descended from 
some insectivorous beast not very unlike a hedgehog, 
minus his spikes. But on this hypothesis, again, it is 
absolutely necessary that a number of very similar 
structures must be affirmed to have arisen independently. 
Such, in fact, must have been the case with all those 
structural and functional characters by which the various 
groups of marsupials, resemble the various parallel groups 
of placental beasts. Thus it is that the opossum and its 
allies exemplify "the independent origin of similar 
structures" more convincingly than almost any other 
order of beasts. They do so indeed in a way which 
makes denial simply impossible. 

But among themselves alone, they force on our obser- 
vation a subordinate instance of the same thing, and this 
is why we call attention to the various forms of structure 
presented by the marsupial hind-foot. We found its 
second and third toes becoming more and more bound 
together as we passed from the wombat, through the 
phalangers and bandicoots, to the kangaroos; while in 
the carnivorous forms, as also in the American opossum, 
these toes are as Avell developed and as independent as 
the others. We will call the former set, Group A., and 
the latter set, Group B. One of two alternatives, then, 
we must admit : either the forms contained in each group 
are specially connected by blood relationship and descent or 
they are not. If they are, then the various resemblances 
which may be detected between them, and which cannot 
be thought due to descent from a common ancestor, are 



THE OPOSSUM 



55 



similar characters which must have arisen independently. 

If they are not so specially connected, then similar and 

extremely exceptional characters of the foot must have 

aiisen independently. 

Fig. 14. 




THE CH^ROPUS. 



But the structure of these curious feet teaches us yet 
another lesson. It cannot be supposed that the minute 
differences which exist between the second and third and 
fourth and fifth toes of the wombat are of vital im- 



56 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

portance to it, and yet they present us with what seer 
to be the initial, incipient condition of the character whi 
becomes so very strongly marked in the kangaroo, 
is more marked in the phalangers than in the wombj 
but still we can hardly deem its condition such as to 
of much, if any, importance to the life of those anima 
But in the bandicoots it is so much marked that it m: 
be of much use to them, and in the kangaroos it ci 
hardly be otherwise. Nevertheless we cannot consid 
that the forms which possess this character in a slig 
degree are descendants of kangaroo-like creatures. Y 
even if we did, we must, on the popular view of evolutic 
admit that the latter inherited it from antecedent u 
known forms in which it was very slightly marked, 
would seem^ then, that here we have a character whi 
has become gradually more and more developed, but 
starting was of no appreciable use to the creatui 
possessing it. It would seem to have been developed f 
the service of other forms of life which were destined 
come into existence at a later period. 

But this character has been carried out to an ev^ 
more exaggerated degree than in the kangaroo, and i 
will speak of the animal in which it is so exaggerate 
and of one or two species besides, before we proceed 
determine the precise position occupied by the Americi 
species, so that we may obtain a good answer to t' 
question, "What is an opossum " ? 

The creature, the foot of which we have just referr 
to, is a very singular animal, which was discovered by S 
Thomas Mitchell on the banks of the Murray River, 
was first described in 1838, and named Cheer opus (Fig. l^ 
It is a slender-snouted, long-eared creature, less than twel 
inches in length from the nose to the root of the tail, ai 
with exceedingly slender and delicate legs and feet. ] 



THE OPOSSUM 



57 



food consists of insects and vegetable substances, and it 
forms a nest of leaves and grass. Its feet, however, 
constitute its main peculiarity. Every one knows 
that beasts differ somewhat as to the number of their 
toes — five to each foot being the maximum. In 
the horse, ass, and zebra alone are these reduced to a 

Fig. 15. 




THE MYRMECOBIUS. 



single toe for each foot — those, namely, which answer to 
our middle finger and our own middle toe respectively. 
In sheep, oxen^ deer, &c., each foot rests upon two toes 
only, but the chseropus walks upon six toes. Each of its 
fore-limbs is supported on two toes, while each of its 
hind-limbs, like each of the hind-limbs of the horse, rests 
upon one only. This single toe, however, is not the one 
the horse uses, but corresponds to our fourth toe, and 



58 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

to that which is the main support of the hind-limb of 
the kangaroo. Minute rudiments of the other toes exist 
beside it. 

The next animal we wish to bring before our reader's 
attention is the Myrmecohius, an elegant, sharp- nosed, 
long-tailed, and bushy-tailed creature about the size of 
a squirrel, with the hinder part of the body ornamented 
with numerous transverse bands alternately light and 
dark (Fig. 1 5). It was first discovered by Lieut. Dale, in 
Western Australia, who found two specimens which had 
fled to hollow trees for refuge. The species was described 
and named by the late Mr. Waterhouse of the British 
Museum in 1836. 

It runs with successive leaps, the tail being somewhat 
elevated, and every now and then will stop and raise its 
body, resting on its hind feet, thus altogether looking 
very like a squirrel. When caught it is harmless and 
tame, never attempting to bite, but uttering short, half- 
smothered grunts in its great alarm. The female appears 
to bring forth from five to nine young, using a hole in 
the ground or a hollow tree as a nest. She has no pouch, 
and the young are only protected by the very long and 
delicate hak-s which clothe the region where the pouch is 
situated in other species. But the most remarkable 
character which the animal possesses consists in the 
great number of its grinding, or molar teeth, of which 
there are sixteen in the upper jaw and eighteen in the 
lower. 

Now attractive as this little creature is, its interest 
for us consists in the fact of its being a ''survival" of a 
very ancient state of things indeed. The opossum of 
America can lay claim to being of " old family," since it 
can prove its descent from the time when its relatives 
left their remains in the rocks beneath what is now Paris. 



M 



THE OPOSSUM 59 

But that time was, after all, only in the tertiary period, 
and a "tertiary" family can have but a mushroom 
antiquity in the eyes of a creature which can establish 
its claim to have had ancestors in a flourishing condition 
during the secondary epoch. Yet this is just what the 
little myrmecobius can do. Its congeners even then 
lived in England, as is proved by the fact that their 
relics have been found in the Stonesfield oolitic rocks, 
the deposition of which is separated from that which 
gave rise to the Paris tertiary strata, by an abyss of past 
time which we cannot venture to express even in 
thousands of years. We have, then, in Australia what 
may be termed a surviving oolitic land, still showing us, 
in the present day, a living representative of forms 
which once indeed dwelt in the north, but have long 
since passed away from among us, leaving but rare and 
scattered rehcs " sealed within the iron hills." 

When we pass from secondary and tertiary strata to 
deposits comparatively modern, we find that creatures 
closely allied to the kangaroo existed in Australia in 
times which must be called ancient historically, though 
very recent geologically. Just as in the recent deposits 
of South America we find the bones of large beasts, first 
cousins to the sloths and armadillos which exist there 
still, so in Australia there lived beasts having all the 
more essential structural characteristics of the kangaroo, 
yet of the bulk of the rhinoceros. 

But, while we are speaking of fossils, we may mention 
an interesting circumstance which occurred with respect 
to the Paris predecessor of the American opossum found 
by Cuvier in the quarries of Montmartre. He first laid 
bare a lower jaw, and from a character it possessed — 
which is common to marsupial animals generally — he 
predicted that when the rest of the skeleton was 



6o 



TYPES OP' ANIMAL LIFE 



uncovered, marsupial bones would be found present 
within it. Accordingly, in the presence of friends and 
admirers, he proceeded to remove the enveloping deposit 
with the greatest care, and so laid bare before the 
astonished eyes of his visitors, the very proof of the 
correctness of his prediction. 

Quite recently there has been discovered in Australia a 
small mole-like beast which has been named Notoryctes. 
Some naturalists have considered it an Insectivore, but it 
is really a Marsupial, and a most interesting one, to 
which we shall again refer later on. Its marsupial 
bones are quite rudimentary. 

Fig. i6. 




THE MARSUPIAL MOLE. 



The last Australian animal we think it needful here 
to note is one which some of our readers may wonder 
we did not mention earlier. We refer to the Orni- 
thorhynchus or duck-billed platypus, which gave rise, 
naturally enough, to so much astonishment when it was 
discovered at the close of the last century. Its bird-like 
mouth perhaps suggested the notion that it laid eggs, as 
a duck's bill is an awkward apparatus to suck milk with. 
It was found, however, that in the very young the bill is 
quite soft, and that it does at first feed on milk, like 



THE OPOSSUM 



6i 



other beasts. Nevertheless, it is now certain that it truly 
lays eggs, and that the same is the case with the 
echidna. 

Fig. 17. 




THE ORNITHORPIYNXHUS. 



But these two animals differ from all other beasts in 
so many and such important points that they almost 
form a sort of zoological half-way house between birds 



62 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

and reptiles on the one side, and ordinary beasts upon 
the other. It is impossible here to describe these pecu- 
liarities ; it must suffice to affirm their existence, and the 
reader who cares to pursue the subject further will find a 
description of them in every modern manual of compara- 
tive anatomy. These characters justify the separation of 
the platypus and echidna from all other beasts, and we 
must recognise that they form a sub-class by themselves, 
which, on account of the resemblance which in many 
respects it presents to birds, is called Ornithodelphia, and 
the platypus and echidna are termed "ornithode][)hou5 
mammals." 

But the marsupials, apart from these two forms, are 
now also universally recognised as by themselves con- 
stituting another sub-class, which, on account of its 
uterine structure, is termed Didelphia, and all marsupials 
are, therefore, spoken of as '' didelphous mammals." 

All the rest of the class of beasts — i.e. of the class mam- 
maha — constitute the third sub-class, which in the number 
of its species of course enormously exceeds that which 
contains the marsupials. This third sub-class, to which 
all those orders belong which were known before 
Australia was discovered, is distinguished as the sub- 
class Monodelphia, and all the creatures in it (the bat, the 
mole, the ape, the squirrel, the dog, the deer, the sloth, 
the ant-eater, the hedgehog, &-c.), are known as " mono- 
delphous mammals." 

Our readers may now be able to appreciate how great 
was the hidden interest of that American beast known as 
the opossum. Little did those who first observed it suspect 
that it was an example of a group of animals so profoundly 
different from all mammals previously known. It was, 
in fact, impossible to appreciate its importance correctly 
till the be?-sts of Australia had been discovered and could 



THE OPOSSUM 63 

be compared with other before known mammals and also 
vrith it. Moreover, though the American opossum is a 
marsupial, and possesses all the characters of the didel- 
phous sub-class, it is none the less the representative of 
a very distinct family of that sub-class. It has been 
pointed out how distinct are the apes which inhabited 
the Old World from all those in America. It is just the 
same with the marsupials. There is no single species of 
marsupial found in Australia or anywhere else out of 
America which is in the present day also found in 
America. The American opossums are as much marsu- 
pials as are any marsupials. Nevertheless^ they do not 
exhibit such great anomalies as do the kangaroos and 
bandicoots with respect to their feet, or the myrmecobius 
with respect to the number of its teeth. 

But the geographical limits of the whole order, or sub- 
class, of marsupials are very interesting, for they are, at 
the same time, the limits of many other groups of animals 
and also of plants. We have not only an animal popula- 
tion (or fauna), but also a set of plants (or flora) which 
is characteristic of what is called the Australian region, 
that is extending not only over Australia and Tasmania, 
but more or less over New Guinea and the Moluccas, 
reaching as far north-v/est as the Island of Lombock, 
and even to Timor. 

In India, the Malay Peninsula, and the great islands 
of the Indian Archipelago, we have another and a very 
different fauna and flora — that, namely, at the Indian 
region ; and Indian forms of life extend downward south- 
east as far as the Island of Bali. Now, Bali is separated 
from Lombock by a strait of about fifteen miles broad. 
Yet that little channel is the boundary line between 
these two great regions — the Australian and the Indian. 
The Indian fauna advances to its western margin, while 



64 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

the Australian fauna stops short at its eastern margin. 
The zoological line of demarcation which thus passes 
through these straits is called "Wallace's line/' because its 
discovery is due to the labours of that eminent naturalist 
and most persevering explorer. He showed that not only 
as regards beasts, but also ai regards birds, these regions 
are thus sharply limited. Australia, he pointed out, has 
no woodpeckers and no pheasants, those widely spread 
Indian birds. Instead of these it has mound-making 
turkeys, honey-suckers, cockatoos, and brush-tongued 
lories, all of which are found nowhere else in the world. 
By becomiDg acquainted with all the various facts here 
detailed, it is possible to answer the question, " What is 
an opossum ? " 

We may say that an opossum is a form of marsupial 
life found only in America, and that it is a member of 
an order so peculiar as to constitute by itself a sub-class 
of the great class of beasts or mammalia. It is also a 
member of a sub-class intermediate between that to 
which the overwhelming majority of beasts belong, and 
the very restricted ornithodelphous sub-class which leads 
us down toward birds and reptiles. We may further say 
that the opossum is one important link in the evidence 
which, in some zoological respects, connects the South 
American continent with Australia, while at the same 
time it adds one more ground to the many which 
already exist for believing in the close zoological rela- 
tionship between North America and the Europe of 
tertiary times. But the opossum has also another note- 
worthy distinction in that it exists in isolation in the 
midst of a vast continent which teams with non-marsupial 
forms of mammalian life. All the other marsupials live 
together in one mass, in all but complete isolation from 
non-marsupial beasts, the only exception being a few 



THE OPOSSUM 65 

forms which are found in islands in the vicinity of 
Australia. There yet remains, with respect to the 
opossum, a most interesting question, as to which we are 
as yet quite unable to suggest any answer — ^the question 
namely, whence it came and from what line of ancestry. 
The answer to this question may not improbably be 
supplied by further discoveries among those fossil treasures 
which are rapidly making the North American continent 
the great centre of observation for all zoologists interested 
m the past. 



Ill 

THE TURKEY 

What is a Turkey ? This is a question on the consider- 
ation of which a little time may be spent, not unpro- 
fitably. There is no other bird which should indeed be 
so replete with interest for the Enghsh-speaking races of 
both sides of the Atlantic. Handsome in appearance, 
considerable in size, familiar as a piece de resistance at 
family feasts of the highest political or deepest religious 
significance both in America and England, the turkey's 
scientific relations are also noteworthy, as we shall see 



But however interested Englishmen may be scientifi- 
cally or gastronomically in the turkey, its claims on the 
appreciation and interests of Americans are, of course, 
greater. For almost every one now knows that the 
turkey is naturally an inhabitant of North America ex- 
clusively, and that no man has found one in a wild state 
anywhere else in the wide world. But there is more than 
this to be said as to its geographical exclusiveness. As 
we have seen, the Virginian opossum is an inhabitant of 
North America exclusively to day, though in earlier 
times it dwelt in Europe. But all the evidence there is 
goes to show that in Miocene times, as now, the turkey 
was an inhabitant of America only. 

Not without reason did the great Franklin recommend 
the adoption of this peaceful, useful, ornamental and 



THE TURKEY ^^ 

nutritious bird as a symbol of the great, peaceful, and 
prolific American republic, in preference to a creature so 
useless and destructive as an eagle — a kind of bird com- 
mon to every quarter of the globe, and so hackneyed as 
a national symbol that nothing less than representing 
it with three heads would serve conspicuously to dis- 
tinguish it from the single or double-headed eagles of 
European monarchies. 

When North America was discovered, the turkey was 
distributed very widely east of the Kocky Mountains 
throughout what is now the United States, though as a 
wild bird its range in our days has become very much 
restricted. The Spaniards doubtless first brought it to 
Europe, and it probably owes its English name to the 
fact of its having first reached England in trading ships 
from the Levant. The first description we have of the 
turkey is that given by Oviedo in 1525, in his " History 
of the Indies." In 1566, however, twelve of these birds 
were presented to the French King Charles IX., and the 
first record of its appearance at a state banquet was at 
his wedding four years later. Soon after that it seems 
to have become common in England, and already to 
have found its place as a family dish at Christmas 
dinners. 

We now propose to consider : (i) what are the turkey's 
nearest allies among birds ; (2) what relation the group 
to which it belongs bears to other groups of the class of 
birds; (3) the relations which it bears as a bird to other 
animals. 

The most anciently domesticated bird, and the one 
now most mdely diffusied, is, of course, the fowl so ex- 
tensively bred by the ancient Egyptians and so brutally 
used in England down to the beginning of the last 
century. Besides cock-fighting, there were the much 



68 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

less known sports of ''hen threshing" and "cock 
throwing." 

For the former amusement a live hen was slung over a 
man's back who also carried horse bells, and was pursued 
about some court or enclosure by a number of blindfolded 
fellows, each of whom held a bough, with which they 
sought to kill the hen, amusing the bystanders meantime 
with the blows they bestowed on one another and on the 
bearer of the hen. 

" Cock throwing " was a sport practised on Shrove 
Tuesday. The bird being tied by the leg, the thrower had 
to stand twenty-two yards off from it, and then try to 
knock down the bird by throwing a stick, after which he 
had to run up and catch it before it could recover its legs. 
In London, so late as 1680, money paid for this cruel 
sport was one of the sources set apart for the mainte- 
nance of the poor, and it was a recognised amusement 
of the lads of EngHsh public schools till about the 
year 1700. 

The parent of the domestic fowl [Gallus hanhiva) — the 
Bankiva fowl — is found wild over a very extensive 
range of country, usually from the Himalayas down to 
Timor and the Phihppine Islands. It much resembles 
the game fowl, as also do several other species of the 
same great Indian region. To that region also belong 
the peacocks and various handsome pheasants. Peacocks 
are common enough in various parts of India, nor can 
those who have once enjoyed it easily forget the glorious 
sight of a number of these birds displaying their gorgeous 
plumage in the sun. But the Javan peacock, with its 
lovely neck of green and gold, is even more beautiful. 
We all talk of the " tail " of the peacock, and yet the 
feathers which form the part we thus name, are not 
really " tail feathers," but answer to the much smaller 



THE TURKEY 



69 



ones which cover the base of the ordinary tail feathers 
in most birds. They are what are technically called " tail 
coverts." The real tail feathers of a peacock are the 



Fig. 18. 




THE PEACOCK PHEASANT. 



short and strong ones which stand up and support the 
magnificent plumes of the *' peacock in his pride," as 
heralds term it. 

Not less wonderful than the so-called tail of the pea- 



70 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

cock are the wings of the Argus pheasant. Though the 
body of the bird is not much larger than that of a fowl, 
the wings are each nearly three feet long, and so wide 
as to be of quite unwieldy size for flight, while the tail 
feathers are nearly a yard in extent. But it is the eye- 
like spots on its wings which are the most remarkable. 
A series of these, ornament each long wing feather, and 
when the large wings are expanded so that all their eyes 
are displayed (as they are in time of courtship), the 
effect is wonderful. 



Fig. 19. 




LADY AMHERST S PHEASANT. 

A smaller but still more beautiful bird is the peacock 
pheasant (Fig. 18), which has its tail as well as its wings 
covered with " eye spots." 

The common pheasant never at any time was a really 
wild bird in the British islands, but was introduced into 
England at so early a date that it figured at feasts 
on the tables of our Saxon kings. Its true home seems 
to have been between the south of the Caspian and 
Black Seas. It is still wild in that vicinity, in the 
valleys of the Caucasus, the northern parts of Asia 
Minor, and, it is said, in Corsica. 

In Southern and Central Asia there are as many as 
thirty-five different kinds of pheasants, the most beauti- 
ful of which is Lady Amherst's pheasant, the plumes 



THE TURKEY 71 

of the bird being like those of the gold pheasant in form, 
although its colours are far more delicate, harmonious, 
and refined. The longest tail of all is met with in 
Reeves's pheasant, the tail feathers of which bird may 
exceed seven feet. 

Besides pheasants, certain curious birds called trago- 
pans are found in India and Southern China. They are 
often spoken of as " horned," because of a soft piece of 
fleshy substance, shaped like a finger, which is attached 
to the side of the head on each side behind each eye. It 
is of difierent colours in difierent species of tragopans, 
and, though it ordinarily hangs down, it can be erected, 
when the bird really seems as if it had a pair of horns. 
A piece of distensible flesh also hangs down in front of 
the throat. 

Now, all the birds (apart from the turkey) yet 
mentioned — namely, the fowls, peacocks, pheasants and 
tragopans — have long been recognised by naturalists as 
being birds near akin, and so they have been spoken of 
as gallinaceous birds, from the generic name gallus, long 
ago assigned to the most familiar kind, the fowl. 

The birds just described are all Asiatic forms, but 
when we cross the Isthmus of Suez or the Red Sea into 
Africa, we bid adieu to every one of them ; yet although 
we meet there with no peacock, fowl, or pheasant, we do 
meet with a small group of peculiar forms which are 
alKed to them in nature, however difi*erent they may be 
in aspect. These African gallinaceous birds are the 
Guinea fowls, a variety of species of which range from 
northern to southern Africa and into the great Island 
of Madagascar. None of them approaches the phea- 
sants in beauty of plumage or in grace of form, and every 
one knows the sobriety of tint of that Guinea fowl which 
has been introduced into our farm-yards. Yet some 



72 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

species, notably the vulturine Guinea fowl, are hand- 
some and rather gaily coloured birds. 

The vast region of Australia is entirely destitute of all 
pheasants, fowls, or peacocks, and also of Guinea fowls. 
Nevertheless we find there certain large birds which, though 
exceedingly exceptional as regards their habits, must be 
considered as allies of the above-mentioned species. 
These are the birds — called "mound-building" or 
" bush turkeys — which differ from all others as to 
the mode in which their eggs are hatched. Instead 
of sitting on them, they deposit them within large 
mounds of earth, which they heap up with their very 
powerful feet, wherein they also deposit more or less 
decaying organic substances. It is from the heat given 
forth by this decaying matter that the eggs of most of 
these birds are hatched, though some deposit their eggs in 
the sand of the seashore and there leave them to be hatched 
by the heat of the sun. They lay very large eggs, and 
the young within them become so matured and well- 
feathered before they are hatched that they are said to be 
able at once to fly away so soon as (after leaving the egg- 
shell) they have found their way to the surface of the 
mound. 

If we were to cross the Pacific from Australia, land on 
the coast of South America, and traverse the Andes to 
the forest regions of Brazil, we should there meet with 
yet other new and peculiar kinds of " gallinaceous birds," 
also of large size. There are the curassows, birds which 
may be seen in most well-organised zoological gardens, 
and are always to be found in those of London. 

The curassows are sober-coloured birds, and (like so 
many Brazillian forms of life) more especially adapted 
for living in trees than are their allies of other 
regions. 



THE TURKEY 



73 



It is to this widespread group of gallinaceous birds 
(so differently represented in each great region of the 
earth's surface) that a new member was added when, 
North America being visited, the turkey was discovered. 
But the turkey of the United States does not stand 
alone; another species is found in Central America 
which is known as the ocellated, or Honduras turkey, and 
it is a most gorgeous bird. It is indeed one of the most 
gorgeous of all " gallinaceous birds," with tints of blue and 



Fig 20 




THE OCELLATED TURKEY. 



green and red and gold, and beautiful and brilliant eye- 
like spots upon the tail feathers. 

Such, then, is the turkey as regards its nearest 
ornithological allies. It, and the ocellated species, are 
the representatives in America north of the Isthmus of 
Panama, of the peacocks and pheasants of India, the 
Guinea fowls of Africa, the mound builders of Australia, 
and the curassows of South America. 

These creatures, together with the partridges, the 
grouse and the quails, constitute the entire order of 



74 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

gallinaceous birds. We come now to our second ques- 
tion. What is the relation borne by their order (in 
which the turkey finds its place) to the other ordinal 
groups of the class of birds ? 

Now the class of birds is remarkable for the great 
number of species it contains, and the general uniformity 
of structure which they all possess. There are probably 
nearer twelve than ten thousand different species of birds, 
and in order that the human mind may be able to group 
in the imagination such a multitude of forms, an elab- 
orate system of classification is evidently necessary. On 
the other hand, to arrange satisfactorily a multitude 
of forms, which are very much alike, is obviously a 
very difficult task. In the early days of ornithological 
science birds were roughly divided into birds of prey, 
perchers, scratchers, cooers, climbers, waders, runners, 
and swimmers. Of these eight primitive sets, it is the 
" scratchers " which answer to the gallinaceous group, and 
they have kept together ; whereas the progress of know- 
ledge has much divided and modified all the other sections 
of that primitive arrangement. 

The subject of the classification of birds has greatly 
exercised naturalists of late years, but to deal adequately 
with that subject would require a long chapter. The 
characters made use of to distinguish the various ordinal 
groups also, are too technical and minute to be given 
here. We must limit ourselves to a list of types of such 
groups. 

These will be: i, An immense group of mostly small 
birds, from the crows and birds of paradise, to the humming 
birds; 2, the kingfishers and their alllies; 3, the wood- 
pecker and its kin; 4, the cuckoos; 5, the doves ; 6, the 
parrots ; 7, the eagle and owls ; 8, the pelicans j 9, the 
herons; 10, the bustards and rails; 11, the gallinaceous 



THE TURKEY 



75 



birds; 12, the snipes, (tc. ; 13, the gulls 14, the auks; 
15, the ducks and geese ; 16, the penguins; 17, the tina- 
mous (birds of South America which approach the ostrich 
in the shape of the skull bones), and 18, the ostrich itself 




IHE RED BIRD OF PARADISE. 



and its allies. The species here selected in each case are 
given merely as types ; there are, of course, many other 
forms in each group which cannot be referred to sepa- 
rately. 

The turkey, then, is a member of a small and peculiar 



76 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

group of birds^ different members of which have their 
home in different quarters of the globe, while the order 
contains the most ancient species ever domesticated by 
man. 

But it is also one of a great number of species of- the 
bird class, which are most peculiar in very different ways 
and yet all of them agree in being entirely confined to 
the American continent. 

These birds are not — save the curassows — members of 
the turkey's order, and the only bond between it and 
them, is a geographical one — the fact that they are found 
nowhere in the world save in North or South America. 
It is the southern and central portions of the continent 
which contain the enormous majority^ of such forms, 
although most educated persons have heard of the 
mocking bird, the passenger pigeon, and the canvas- 
backed duck, as peculiar to North America. 

To the south of that region we find the immense 
majority of species of those living gems, the humming 
birds, which it is the distinction of America to possess 
exclusively. The warmer parts of that continent also 
contain more species of parrots than are to be met with 
in any other quarter of the globe. 

Even in the United States a species of parrot still lives 
in Florida, while eighty years ago it was abundant f ui-ther 
north. Yet no members of its order exist in even the 
w^armest corner of Europe. Not that a great warmth is 
an absolutely necessary condition, for a company of cock- 
atoos long lived in a semi-wild state on a gentleman's 
property in Norfolk who had introduced them there, and 
had their food in winter carefully provided for them. 

But the warmer parts of America are also the exclu- 
sive home of those singular and beautifully plumaged 
birds the toucans, which are so distinguished by the 



THE TURKEY 77 

possession of beaks as remarkable for their extreme light- 
ness as for their seemingly unwieldly size. There also 
alone are to be found tanagers, jaoamars, motmots,* and 
bodies, besides some very singular and exceptional forms. 



Fig, 




SCHRENCK'S TANAGER. 



One of these latter is the horned screamer, which appears to 
be really a much-modified and arboreal goose, as does a still 

* For notices and figures of these and many other pecul^'ar 
birds, see the author's "Elements of Ornithology." — R. H. 
Porter, Princes Street, Cavendish Square, 



78 



TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



more screaming, though hornless, form, called the chauna. 
Another is the cariama, a creature so puzzling that while 
some ornithologists regard it as a sort of hawk, others con- 
sider it a kind of bustard. There also are vultures such as 



Fig. 23. 




THE CHAUNA. 



the huge condor of the Andes and the king vulture — 
both of which are so exceptional in structure that some 
of the most advanced of our naturalists altogether deny 
their claim to be considered vultures at all. South 



THE TURKEY 



79 



America has also its own ostrich-like bird, the rhea, 
which nevertheless presents us with a quite peculiar type 
of bird-life and has the bony girdle of its hip differently 
constructed from that of any other bird on the face of 



Fig. 24 




THE CONDOR. 



the earth. . Another South American bird, one which 
lightly resembles a parrot in aspect, is known as the 
" Hoatzin," and is a very odd creature. Besides certain 
anatomical peculiarities it would be out of place here to 



8d TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

notice, its juvenile condition is most exceptional. Then, 
part of its wing which answers to our hand is extra- 
ordinarily large for a bird, and is provided with two long 
claw-bearing fingers, by the help of which it is said to 
move about more like a quadruped than the bird which 
later on it proves itself unmistakably to be. 

The turkey is thus one of a goodly company of pecu- 
liar American birds, but it remains for us to see what is 
implied in the fact of its being a bird at all. It is im- 
possible to understand fully what a turkey is unless we 
know what are the characters it possesses in virtue of its 
avian nature, characters which it shares with other 
members of its class — the class of birds. 

Now a bird is one of the most wonderfully organised 
of all animals, and almost the whole of its organisation 
is arranged for flight. The turkey is not particularly 
distinguished in this respect, nor are gallinaceous birds 
generally, and some of them, as the argus pheasant, seem 
to be quite exceptionally deficient in powerful and easy 
aerial locomotion. Nevertheless they all participate in 
those essential peculiarities which facilitate the rapid 
gyrations and the wide wanderings of their more capable 
cousins. The flights some birds will take are indeed 
amazing. A falcon which belonged to Henry TV. of 
France, is known to have flown from Fontainebleau to 
Malta, a distance of 1350 miles, in one day. The 
celebrated race horse named Eclipse would run at the 
rate of a mile a minute, yet there are hawks which fly at 
a pace of 150 miles an hour. But not only the rapidity, 
but also the endurance which birds possess is wonderful. 
Swallows will migrate from England to the south of 
Africa. 

Oceanic birds are, as might be expected, exceptional 
even among their class for long-continued flight. Many 



THE TURKEY 8i 

of them rarely come to land except to breed. The well- 
known stormy petrels, called by English sailors " Mother 
Carey's chickens," are not much larger than swallows, 
yet they will accompany a ship on its course for many 
days. Every one has heard of the albatross, and the 
frigate bird is also widely known. Both of these birds 
possess wings of enormous length, and the former is 
'celebrated for its power of sailing in the breeze without 
once flapping its wings, till the observer is tired of watch- 
ing it. 

But the mode of life of a great number of birds forces 
them to execute the most extensive journeys. They 
have a persistent habit of departing toward the approach 
of winter from their colder quarters to seek warmth and 
more abundant food in other climes. This is " migra- 
tion," and migrating birds always breed in the coldest 
parts they visit, whether in the northern or in the 
southern hemisphere. Little, however, is known of 
migi-ation in the more southern regions of the globe, 
and the Antarctic lands are so extremely cold that they 
are not visited as are the lands toward the extreme 
north. 

When the time of the autumn migration arrives, it is 
the young birds which, in spite of their inexperience of 
the route, set out first, save that an old bird will some- 
times take it into its head to start before the regular 
time comes, but on the return journey the youngsters 
generally lag behind. 

Thus locomotion of an extraordinary kind is habitual 
with birds — locomotion both rapid and prolonged, and 
effected by persistent reiterated strokes of the wings 
against the resistance which the atmosphere opposes to 
their efforts. These efforts are also made by the help 
of vigorous bones and muscles, and a flying bird falls 

F 



82 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

immediately when any injury has paralysed its muscular 
power, as every sportsman knows. 

That such feats of flight should be performed by a 
creatiu-e so solidly built needs a very careful and a very 
pecuhar arrangement of the parts and organs which 
compose its body. The various organs are indeed so 
packed and arranged as to make the centre of the body's 
gravity fall just where it can be best sustained, and 
they are so constructed as to produce, in combination, 
the greatest strength and warmth with the least possible 
weight. But no dissection is needed in order that we 
may see how admirable a bird's organisation is. Its 
very external clothing shows us this, for it is made 
up of feathers, and a feather is a^ very marvel of 
skilful construction. It is a structure at once so light 
and so strong, so admirably adapted to retain the heat of 
the body that it is hardly possible to imagine anything 
of the kind more perfect. 

A bird's bones must be strong for the work they have 
to perform, and to be strong they must possess a certain 
solidity, and therefore weight, but this weight is com- 
monly reduced to the minimum necessary for the needful 
strength. This reduction is efiected partly by a skilful 
arrangement of the solid parts themselves, but it is 
further efiected by the bones containing not a mass of 
marrow, but warm (and therefore light) air. In some 
birds even each bone of the toes is thus furnished, while 
air passes into the bones of the skeleton freely by means 
of passages, which extend to them from the lungs. But 
in order that a bird may be able to fly, great power 
is no less indispensable than is lightness of structure, 
and to move the wings as they need to be moved for 
flight, very large muscles are necessary. Large muscles 
are necessary to raise as well as to depress the wings 



THE TURKEY S3 

rapidly. Such opposite actions are produced in other 
animals by muscles placed on opposite sides of the 
body, but it would never do for birds to have a heavy 
mass of flesh on their backs. Accordingly, by a special 
and most simple contrivance, both movements are brought 
about by muscles conveniently placed in layers on the 
under surface of the body. The muscles which pull 
down the wing act directly on the wing bones, but the 
muscles which pull them up, act indirectly : the sort of 
cord in which they end being bent round a bony pulley so 
as completely to reverse the action they would otherwise 
produce. This is the reason why there is so much meat 
on the breast of a bird — such as a partridge or a wood- 
cock. It consists of the muscles wliich both pull down the 
wings and raise them. The relation which exists between 
the volume of these muscles and the power of flight is 
well instanced by the difierence in the quantity of meat 
we find on the breast of a wild duck and a tame duck 
respectively. 

A bird might, however, have the most voluminous of 
muscles, but they would be of small use to it, were they 
not stimulated by a copious supply of vivifying blood, 
kept pure by a most efficient process of respiration. And 
these aids are supplied with very exceptional complete- 
ness. 

It is plain that in such a creature as a bird, the further 
any organ may be removed from the centre of gravity, 
the more necessary it becomes tliat it should be neither 
heavy nor bulky. Thus a bird's arm and hand are 
reduced to what is just necessary to sustain and wield 
the large feathers which form the wing. The hand is 
especially diminished, and its few rudimentary fingers arc 
closely bound together in a fold of skin. And yet birds 
have a great many "handy "actions to perform. What 



84 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

dexterous " manipulation " is needed to construct the 
wonderfully delicate, yet strongly woven nests so many 
of them form ! But as they have no hand to use, and 
cannot (as monkeys can) use their feet as hands, they are 
forced to manage another way. And they do manage 
admirably with the help of their bill, which is indeed a 
" handy " organ and serves as a most skilful and delicate 
instrument for prehension. But birds could not thus 
use it if their neck was as little mobile as is our own. 
Their neck, therefore, is very mobile — so mobile that, even 
when it is short, the head can be turned round so as to 
look directly over the back. The exclusive devotion of 
the arms and hands to flight, makes it necessary for a 
bird to devote its other limbs entirely, or almost entirely, 
to locomotion. For this purpose the legs need to be 
supplied with vigorous muscles, and yet every one must 
have remarked what thin and delicate legs birds have. 
The fact is, they have very strong and voluminous leg 
muscles, but then they are gathered together in the 
thighs and upper parts of the legs — near the centre of 
gravity. But though thus distant from the toes, they 
are enabled to act upon them by the aid of long and delicate 
cords, or tendons, which run down side by side through 
the thin parts of the legs to end in the toes, on which (by 
the insertion of their tendons) the strong leg muscles act. 
So complete, indeed, is the process of packing everything 
as centrally as possible carried out, that birds even carry 
their teeth in their stomachs instead of their mouths, 
although Prof. Marsh has shown us that in the "good 
old times " there were birds who held to the ways of their 
probable forefathers and kept their teeth in their jaws. 
But they are not real teeth which our modern birds bear in 
their breasts, though they answer the purposes of true 
teeth. They are small stones, which very many birds 



THE TURKEY 85 

swallow. This is especially the habit of birds which feed 
on grain and other similar substances, which are ground 
a,nd comminuted by the gizzard with the help of the 
stones it is made thus to contain. Again, we all know 
that when we sing we make use of our larynx, an organ 
situated in quite the upper part of our throat, close 
beneath the root of the tongue. We all also know how 
beautifully many birds sing, and we are sure, without 
being told, that they must have their organ of voice also. 
Such an organ, indeed, they have, called the " syrinx." 
But this organ of voice is placed at the bottom of their 
throat instead of at the top; it is situated, again, as 
nearly as it conveniently can be to the centre of gravity. 

A very wonderful organ is the eye of a bird. To say 
that a man has " the eye of a hawk," is highly to com- 
pliment his power of vision. But few persons who use 
that expression realise how great a eulogy it expresses. 
A rapacious bird, such as a hawk, has to keep a close eye 
upon prey which may be running about on the ground 
while it is watched by the hawk from a great altitude. 
When the hawk " stoops," that is, pounces on its quarry, 
it is necessary for it to keep its victim well in sight during 
the whole of the hawk's rapid descent from so great a 
height. How delicate and extensive must be the power 
of adjustment which a hawk's eye possesses in order to 
enable it to eflfect this ! 

The eye of a bird needs to be kept very clear and 
bright, and birds possess a special mechanism for sweeping 
the eye rapidly and often. If we watch a hawk we may 
observe that its eye frequently becomes shrouded for a 
moment by some delicate film passing over it, which is, 
in fact, a third eyelid. We seem to have nothing like 
it, but we really have the rudiment of such a structure 
ourselves. At the inner angle of every human eye there 



86 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

is a minute fold of skin which serves no known pui-pose 
whatever, but is the representative of the bird's third 
eyelid or "nictitating" (that is winking) membrane. A 
truly wonderful mechanism also exists in connection with 
this membrane. It is drawn over the eye by the aid 
of a muscle with a delicate tendon, which sweeps round 
the nerve of sight (the optic nerve), and would injuri- 
ously compress it were it not that, on its way, it passes 
through a loop-like tendon belonging to a distinct 
muscle, which, acting at the same time, pulls it suffici- 
ently away from the nerve of sight to avoid all ill 



The turkey shares in all the above-noted peculiarities 
of bird structure and bird habits, nest making, and 
careful care of the young among the latter. Its nest^ 
however, is a very poor affair compared with that of the 
majority of land birds, and consists but of a few dried 
leaves or twigs on the ground, perhaps under the 
shelter of some bushes or of a fallen tree. It is the 
weaver birds — birds of the Old World — which construct 
the most elaborate nests known. They construct immense 
ones, or rather a huge cluster of nests placed sociably side 
by side, under one cover, each nest having its own separate 
entrance on the under side of the whole structure, and 
not. communicating with the nest next to it. The whole 
mass may be ten feet in diameter, and ultimately break 
down from its own weight. 

For details as to the habits of the turkey, readers 
may be referred to American ornithologists, one of the 
most distinguished of whom is Dr. Elliott Coues. But 
Audubon long ago gave a graphic picture of the parental 
care of the female turkey. It is the Old World, how- 
ever, which affords us the most striking examples both 
of parental and conjugal virtue and defect. There are 



THE TURKEY 87 

to be found the most immoral cuckoos as well as those 
most virtuous of birds, the hornbills. The hornbills 
inhabit both Africa and India, and have beaks almost 
as large, relatively, as those of the toucans, and much more 
hard and dense in structure. The hornbill is a large bird, 
and makes its nest in a hollow tree, and when the female 
has taken up her station within it, her thoughtful mate 
forthwith proceeds to imprison her, closing up the mouth 
of her retreat by means of a partition of mud. The kind- 
ness of this action may at first seem questionable, but it is 
not really so. In the first place the husband is careful 
to leave a small aperture in the partition, of which aper- 
ture he afterward makes a most exemplary use. Leaving 
his wife to pursue uninterruptedly her maternal duties 
he forthwith devotes himself most zealously to her support, 
wandering almost incessantly about in search of food, and 
returning to her again and again to minister to her needs, 
and to feed her through the small opening left for that 
purpose. So great is his devotion to this conjugal duty 
that by the time his progeny come forth from their 
enclosure, their sire may have reduced himself to the 
most sorry plight, sometimes even falling a victim to the 
exhaustion brought on by his devotion to the needs of 
his nesting spouse. 

But to return once more to the turkey, it may be said, 
with the other members of the order of gallinaceous 
birds, to occupy a medium position in the whole class. 
Neither in structure nor in habit does its order show 
extreme peculiarities, save and except the tail of the 
peacock, the wings of the argus pheasant, and the excep- 
tional egg-laying habits of the mound builders. In its 
own order, however, the turkey may claim a distinguished 
place from its utility, its size, and the gorgeous beauty 
of the ocellated or Honduras species. 



88 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

Such, then, is the turkey in itself, a member of the 
gallinaceous order, and such are the structural characters 
it shares with other birds. It now only remains to point 
out the leading characters whereby it, with the other 
members of its class, differs from creatures which are 
not birds. The class of birds, as one of the classes of 
back-boned animals, stands between the class of beasts 
on the one hand and the class of reptiles on the other. 

We saw, when considering the opossum, that the class 
of beasts is divided into a number of very different 
orders. How greatly these differ from one another will 
be apparent if we recall to mind the obvious dissimi- 
larity which exists between an ape and an ox, a bat and 
a lion, a mole and a squirrel, a seal and a mouse, an 
elephant and an armadillo, or an antelope and a whale ; 
and yet these are all of them beasts. We also saw how 
great a diversity may exist in a single order of beasts — 
such as that, e.g.^ to which the opossum belongs. 

Not less striking are the contrasts and divergences 
which exist among the various kinds of reptiles, such as 
between serpents and alligators or between terrapins and 
lizards. 

If, however, we take into account the forms of reptilian 
life which have passed away since the deposition of the 
chalk cliffs of the English coast — since, that is, the end 
of the secondary period — the contrasts and divergences 
become yet more striking. 

In those early times, instead of porpoises and whales, 
the sea swarmed with reptilian predecessors of those 
short-necked beasts. It swarmed with ichthyosauri, 
often of great bulk, and also abounded with those large 
aquatic creatures with more than swan-like necks, the 
plesiosauri. Huge reptiles also grazed in the then exist- 
ing fields or fed on the leaves, fruit, and twigs of forests. 



THE TURKEY 89 

These vegetable feeders, again, were preyed on by fell 
monsters compared with which our lions and tigers seem 
insignificant. The air also was agitated ceaselessly by 
the wings of flying reptiles (pterodactyles) of all sizes, 
flitting like bats, but sometimes with the proportions 
of the albatross. 

This hasty glance at the two classes of beasts and 
reptiles will enable us to appreciate the distinctness of 
the class of birds. They are the most easily defined of 
any class, since the single epithet "feathered" suffices to 
characterise them. It does so because every bird has 
feathers, while no such thing is possessed by any creature 
which is not a bird. 

Birds, as we have already said, stand between beasts 
and reptiles, but are widely distinct from them both. 
All beasts possess, as we possess, warm blood, but the 
blood of the bii^d is warmer still, and thus birds differ 
greatly from reptiles, in spite of their possessing certain 
structural characters in common with them. For the 
reptile the blood is hardly ever warmer than the 
medium which may surround it, the only exception 
known to us being that which occurs in a boa- constrictor 
or python, when hatching its eggs, around which it twists 
itself in a conical coil, surmounted by the ever- watchful 
head. 

But birds differ from both beasts and reptiles, by 
that singular uniformity of their structure before 
adverted to. Some beasts and reptiles have but a 
single pair of limbs. Thus the whales and porpoises 
have but a single pair each, and some reptiles — serpents 
and some lizards — have none, but every bird has two 
pairs. The limbs of beasts and reptiles may be con- 
structed variously. How different are the wings of the 
bat from the scoop of the mole, the paddle of the 



93 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

wliale, and the foot of the horse. But in birds, the hind 
limbs are always " walking " legs^ and fore limbs " wings,'' 
although, as in the ostrich and the apteryx, they may be 
incapable of flight. They are always, that is to say, 
formed on the type of the flying wing, even when they 
cannot sustain or propel the body in the air. We see 
this emphatically in the penguin, a bird incapable of so 
rising, but a most wonderful swimmer beneath the sur- 
face of the sea. There it propels itself by the aid of its 
fore limbs, which are worked powerfully by enormous 
muscles, so that the bird may be said to fly under water. 
Yery many beasts and reptiles have long tails, and some 
have none, but every existing bird has its tail feathers 
supported by a short structure of flesh and bone. 

Most beasts have a hairy coat, and a few are naked, 
while some, as the pangolin and armadillo, are clothed 
with scales or bones, and much diversity exists in the 
covering of reptiles. But all birds are, as before said, 
clad with feathers as to their body and with scales as to 
their feet. Almost all beasts and reptiles have teeth in 
their mouths, though a few, like the ant-eaters, turtles, 
and terrapins, have none. But no existing bird has 
teeth, while all have their jaws clothed with that horny 
investment we call the bill. 

We have, however, compared the class of birds with 
extinct as well as with living reptiles, and, therefore, we 
cannot fully comprehend what the class of birds is, nor 
what the turkey's profoundest relations to other crea- 
tures are, if we take no account whatever of birds which 
have passed away. And very many a bird has here and 
there passed away which was known to a few preceding 
generations of mankind, if not to our own fathers. 

Thus, that handsome bird, the great bustard, was not 
so long ago abundant in the more open parts of England 



THE TURKEY 91 

-such as Salisbury Plain and the Sussex Downs, and it 
lingered on in Yorkshire down to 1830. The spoonbill 
disappeared earlier, having been exterminated toward 
the end of the seventeenth century. 

A very interesting bird, once an inhabitant of Britain, 
which has now become utterly extinct everywhere, is the 
great aiik. It was of about the size of a goose, but, 
having very small wings, was quite unable to fly. Being 
a powerful bird, with a strong bill, and a most accom- 
plished diver, it would have continued to live on in full 
security but for man's reckless destruction of it. Unable 
to rise in the air and deposit its eggs in security on high 
ledges of rock, it could only shuffle along some gentle 
slope to lay its eggs at a safe distance above high water 
mark. It was formerly very abundant, and hundreds of 
auks at a time were taken off the coast of Newfoundland 
in the first quarter of the seventeenth century. 

In 18 13 the auk was abundant on the rocky islands 
off the coast of Iceland, and in 1844 two auks were 
caught on Eldey Island. Since then the auk has dis- 
appeared altogether from Europe and now has vanished 
from the whole world. About seventy-six skins and 
nine skeletons, with sixty-eight eggs and a few bones, 
preserved in collections, are all the relics we have of this 
now extinct and most interesting species. 

The Labrador duck is another bird which has disappeared 
yet more recently, as it lived on till 1852. A curious and 
handsome starling [Fregilupus varius) has also disappeared 
from Mauritius, a most precious skin of which has been 
recently acquired by the British Museum (Fig. 25). The 
name of this island will remind many of our readers 
of its celebrated former inhabitant, the dodo, which 
became extinct by the end of the seventeenth century. 
An extinct bird of Madagascar has been named jrEpiornis^ 



92 



TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



and its egg is the largest one known. If, as is possible, 
its eggs were objects of commerce in ancient times, it 



Fig. 25. 




THE EXTINCT STARLING. 



THE TURKEY 93 

may be that we owe to it the fable of the " roc " (with 
which every reader of the Arabian Nights must be 
familiar), since it is a very natural error to suppose 
that the size of a bird must correspond proportionally 
with that of its egg. 

But it is New Zealand which is justly the most cele- 
brated country for its extinct birds. Till man visited it 
no beasts save bats dwelt there, and those gigantic birds, 
the moas {Binoimis), lorded it over all other living 
creatures, and stalked about in absolute security, without 
the power or need of flight, till man came and extermi- 
nated them. There also was once to be found a large 
bird of prey, known as Rarpagornis, which had more 
powerful claws than any existing eagle possesses. 

But all the extinct species yet mentioned must 
be reckoned as relatively modern forms of life. When, 
however, we descend the stream of time and explore 
the rocks deposited in past geological ages, we find 
unmistakable evidence that birds once existed which 
were very different indeed from any of those which 
people the surface of our planet in the present day. 
Nevertheless, as we recede we find the change which 
has taken place to have been a gradual process of change. 
In the Pliocene rocks we meet only with genera which 
now exist, nor are we struck with any marked geo- 
graphical changes. But in Miocene times, trogons and 
parrots dwelt in Europe, but not the turkey, which even 
then seems (as before said) to have been an exclusive 
inhabitant of America. 

When we penetrate into the Eocene rocks, however, 
we find genera altogether ilew, although allied to such 
birds as larks, kingfishers, vultures, woodpeckers, &c. 
The exploration of the secondary rocks, has, as might 
have been expected, brought much stranger forms to light. 



94 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

The remains of a bird named Hesperornis have there 
been found which had true teeth in its jaws, but was 
yet more remarkable for what it had not. It had only 
a feeble upper arm bone, to the end of this was attached 
but a rudiment of the lower arm. There also has been 
found another bird with teeth, named Ichthyornis, because 
the form of the segments of its backbone recalled to 
mind the form of the same parts in a fish. 

But the most ancient bird yet known was found in 
1861 in oolitic strata in Bavaria. This was the renowned 
Archeoptei^yx, which differed remarkably from every other 
bird we know. We have already said that every existing 
bird, whether its tail feathers are long or short, has 
them supported on a fleshy pad, which contains the 
bones of a very short tail. This *' pad " is what is known 
in the fowl as the *' parson's nose." But the archeo- 
pteryx had no such short tail, but instead, a very long 
one, composed of no less than twenty bones, to each of 
which two long feathers, one on either side, were 
attached. Its hand also was very exceptional. 

The changes which we thus see to have taken place 
in the course of ages, lend additional interest to the 
question — Whence did birds arise? It has been sug- 
gested that they were derived from certain long extinct 
reptiles. These reptiles have been named JDinosaurla, 
and are represented by the large Iguanodon (discovered 
many years ago by Dr. Mantel), which once wandered 
and grazed in the Weald of Kent and Sussex and in 
what is now the Isle of Wight. Travellers to Europe 
may see a magnificent example of this creature, in 
the form of its skeleton, admirably set up, in the 
Museum of Natural History at Brussels. It has also 
been suggested that birds are allied, by descent, 
to those flying reptiles, the pterodactyles, and an in- 



THE TURKEY 95 

genious cast of tlie inner side of the skull of one of 
these has shown that their brain was exceedingly bird- 
like. That the iguanodon-like reptiles w^ere in some 
respects Uke the ostrich and its congeners is not to be 
denied; but then the ostrich and its allies are not 
creatures on the road to become flying birds, but seem 
rather to be degraded descendants of birds which once 
flew. Moreover, the oldest known bird, the archeo- 
pteryx, is not at all ostrich-like, but has much more affinity 
with ordinary birds, save as regards its hand and tail. 
Thus the origin of birds is a question still open to dispute, 
and while welcoming gladly light from any side upon the 
problem, we would carefully eschew a hasty dogmatism 
on that, as on every other subject. 



IV 

THE BULLFEOG 

We have selected the bullfrog as one type of animal life 
in order to introduce to our readers' notice a group of 
animals about which we have been hitherto silent. 
By the aid of the ape and the opossum we have 
taken a preliminary survey of the two great groups 
(placentals and non-placentals) which make up the 
class of beasts. The turkey has aided us to portray the 
general characters of the class of birds, with a side 
glance at that of reptiles ; a group which will be here 
glanced at once more and then reserved for fuller treat- 
ment hereafter. 

But there is another group of animals, allied to fishes, 
about which we have been silent, and it is this one to 
which the bullfrog belongs. It is a group of animals 
which, we think, must be held to constitute a class by 
itself — a class containing creatures which seem very 
different externally, but are none the less fundamentally 
alike. This class, the frog's class, is sometimes called the 
class Batrachia (from the Greek word for a frog), and 
sometimes Amphibia, from the life experiences (as to 
breathing) which most of its members go through. We 
shall elect the former term and speak of the members of 
the frog class as *' batrachians." 

Just as we have seen the classes of beasts and birds to 
be each made up of orders, so also is the batrachian class 



THE BULLFROG 



97 



made up of orders, and these are four in number. Three 
of them are represented by living species, and the 
fourth by others which have been extinct for an un- 
imaginable abyss of time, namely, since the deposition of 
the coal measures. 

Our present endeavour will be, first, to mention cer- 
tain facts about frogs and the whole of that batrachian 



Fig 26. 




THE BULLFROG. 



order of which they form part; secondly, briefly to 
describe the other three orders ; and, thirdly and finally, 
to consider the relations which exist between the frog 
class and the other classes of backboned animals. For, 
just as we found birds to stand between beasts and 
reptiles, so we shall find that batrachians stand between 
reptiles and fishes, and also that as they advance in life 
they become less like the latter and grow more like the 
former. 

But the frog has special claims on our gratitude and 

Q 



98 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

commiseration on account of all it has done and suffered 
to increase our knowledge. In every physiological labora- 
tory frogs are such ceaseless subjects of experiment that 
the animal may well be called the " martyr of science." 
What their legs can do without their bodies, what their 
bodies can do without their heads, what their arms can 
do without either head or trunk, w^hat is the effect of the 
removal of their brains, how they can manage without 
their eyes, what effects result from all kinds of local 
irritations, from chokings, from poisonings, from mutila- 
tions the most varied ? These are questions again and 
again answered practically for the instruction of youth, 
while the most delicate and complex researches are 
carried on through their aid by the jvery first physio- 
logists of Europe. We know by the unhappy instances 
of men who have had their backs broken, that unmistak- 
able results may be produced through irritations which 
are entirely unfelt. A patient may be induced to with- 
draw his foot when its sole is tickled with a feather, 
though he be utterly unconscious of both the tickling 
and the motion of his foot which it induces. Following 
up the indication thus given, it has been found that a 
frog, the head of which has been cut off, will raise one 
of its feet to rub a spot purposely irritated by some 
corrosive fluid, and that when the foot so raised is held or 
cut off, that then the other foot will be applied, instead, to 
the irritated surface. It is thence concluded, as a matter 
of course, that, the head being removed, the frog can no 
longer feel. We do not for a moment believe that it can 
feel, but we are bound to af&rm that it is not evident to us 
that it cannot do so. W"e know nothing about even our 
own sensations except through the conscious intellect 
which accompanies our experience of them; what our 
mere "feeling" apart from that accompaniment may 



THE BULLFROG 99 

in itself be, we can only conjecture. In a creature with 
so small a brain as that of a frog, we cannot dogmatically 
affirm that the spinal marrow may not be an organ of 
feeling, although there is nothing to show us that 
it is. 

Every one knows the soft, smooth, moist skin of this 
animal. Its skin is one of its most important organs. 
Indeed, our own skin is by no means popularly credited 
with the great importance really due to it. " Only the 
skin ! " is an exclamation not unfrequently heard, and 
wonder is felt very often when death supervenes after a 
burn which has injured but a comparatively small surface 
of the body. Our skin is indeed a most important 
structure, and able, in a very slight degree, to supplement 
the action of the lungs as well as of the kidneys. In the 
frog it is really an organ of breathing, almost, if not 
quite, as indispensable as the lungs. Neither will suffice 
without the other. A frog may be strangely choked in 
two ways. To distend its lungs it is compelled to swallow 
air after closing its Hps upon a mouthful of it. Thus a 
frog may be choked by keeping its mouth open. Again, 
no breathing (that is, no exchange of certain gases) can 
take place except on a surface which is moist ; therefore, 
that a frog may breathe with its skin, that skin must be 
moist, and it is kept so by the exceptional ease with 
which water exudes forth from the body upon it. In 
fact Count Smalltalk only made Mrs. Leo Hunter speak 
accurately when he misrepresents her ode as being 
addressed to the " perspiring frog " — for the frog is one 
of the most perspiring of all animals. It is so to such a 
degree that one tied where it cannot escape the scorching 
rays of a summer's sun, will not only die, but soon become 
perfectly dried up — as we recollect discovering when a 
child, to our great sorrow and disappointment. 

LofC. 



100 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

There are a very large number of species of frogs and 
toads. At least fourteen kinds inhabit Europe and 
North Asia and Africa north of the Sahara; above 
ninety are found in Africa south of the Sahara, some 
hundred and sixty in the Indian region, more than 
seventy-five in Australia, no less than three hundred 
and five in tropical America, and fifty-three in the 
North American region. ' 

The phenomena of the life-history of some species of 
frogs and toads are very curious. The ordinary course 
of a frog's development takes place thus : The approach 
of spring calls them forth from their winter retreat, 
which is generally in mud under water. Great numbers 
of them are often dug up in the winter-time, all clustered 
together, in the mud at the bottom of a pond. In the 
month of March their well-known croaking begins to be 
heard in England, and though itself unmelodious, it 
possesses a certain charm through its connection with 
the vernal outburst of Nature. It is then that they 
congregate for egg-laying. Their eggs are little dark, 
round bodies, enclosed in no solid shell, but only in a 
thin glutinous envelope. The latter quickly swells in 
the water, so much so that the " spawn " in the case of 
the common frog soon comes to have the appearance of 
a great mass of jelly, through which dark specks (the 
yolks of the eggs) are scattered. By degrees each little 
dark mass assumes the form of a young tadpole, which 
emerges from the egg toward the end of April. At first 
it has long filamentary processes of skin projecting from 
either side of the neck, and these are the primitive gills or 
aquatic breathing organs. They soon become absorbed 
and are replaced by other shorter gills, w^hich do not 
project visibly from the neck. Little by little the limbs 
bud forth and grow, and at the same time the tail is 



THE BULLFROG loi 

absorbed,* while apertures on either side of the neck 
close up, which were the external openings of the chamber 
in which the secondary gills He, and the young frog then 
breathes by means of its lungs in the ordinary way. The 
tadpole is extremely unlike the frog it is to grow into. Not 
only does it breathe by gills in water, instead of by lungs 
in air, but at first it has a very long tail, with which it 
swims, and no limbs; while when a frog, it has no tail 
but long limbs, which are its only locomotive organs. 
The tadpole has a very small mouth and very long 
intestine, and feeds on vegetable substances. The frog 
has a very large mouth and very short intestine, and 
feeds only on animal matter. 

The common frog is distributed widely over the Old 
World, though unknown to America, which, however, 
possesses another species very like it. Similarly, the 
bullfrog is unknown in the Old World, save in zoological 
gardens, where it is always welcomed as a curiosity. 

The genus (Rana) to which these and other true frogs 
belong has its headquarters in the East Indies and in 
Africa, but extends over all the great regions of the 
world except Australia and New Zealand. In South 
America, however, there are but five species, while there 
are no less than fifteen kinds in North America. 

The common toad (Bufo vulgaris) is as widely dis- 
tributed as is the common frog. Three species of the 
genus Bufo are found in the northern parts of the 
Old World, seven in North America, and seven in 
Africa; twenty-two in the Indian region, and thirty- 
six in tropical America, but none in Australia. They 
all differ from frogs in being toothless, while the frog 

* Thus, when Dickens makes one of his characters exclaim : 
" What next ? as the tadpole said when his tail dropped off," he 
was more amusing than accurate. 



I02 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

has a row of teeth along the margin of the upper jaw. 
The toad has an oblong prominence behind each eye, 
from which a milky fluid exudes, which is very un- 
pleasant to dogs, as they show by a copious flow of 
saliva and many headshakings if they happen to have 
seized a toad and have so come to taste this secretion. 
It exercises a very decided effect upon certain animals, 
since the tadpoles of frogs are very powerfully affected 
by being kept in the same water as a toad, if the 
latter be irritated and so made to discharge this 
fluid. 

A frog {Pelohates Juscus) which is common in France 
and quite harmless, has, nevertheless, a singular provision 
for self-defence. If it be seized or its Jeg pinched, two 
effects follow : It utters a sound like the mewing of a cat, 
and emits a vapour which smells of garlic strongly 
enough to make the eyes water, as mustard or horse- 
radish will do. 

This vapour and the toad's secretion are the nearest 
approach to venomous products w^hich any members of 
the frog's order possess. 

A small European frog, named Alytes ohstetricans, has 
a very curious habit in connection with the regular life- 
history of the species. The female lays her eggs so that 
they adhere together in the form of a long chain. The 
male then twines this chaplet of his wife's eggs round 
and round his thighs till he acquires the aspect of a 
gentleman of the court of the time of James I. arrayed 
in puffed breeches. After having thus encumbered 
himself, he retires, at least during the day, in some 
burrow, till the period arrives when the young are 
ripe for quitting the egg. Then he seeks the water, 
into which he has not long plunged when the young 
burst forth and swim away, after which he makes himself 



THE BULLFROG 103 

tidy (frees himself from the remains of the eggs) and 
resumes his normal appearance. 

Certain frogs are termed tree-frogs, and of their typical 
genus [Hyla) there are thirteen species in North America, 
and eighty-seven in tropical America, while only one has 
a home in Europe. These tree-frogs are remarkable 
for their adaptation to arboreal life, the ends of their 
fingers being spread out so as to form suckers, by which 
they can easily adhere to the leaves of trees. The 
European species, the green frog, has a wide range^ 
though it does not extend to the British Isles. It is a 
very elegant, attractive little animal, but visitors to the 
Riviera may often wonder how so small a creature can 
make so great a noise. We have heard them in the hills 
about Alassio giving forth a sound as if some large steam- 
engine were hard at work in the vicinity. 

Frogs that live on trees may, in spite of their adhesive 
finger tips, sometimes fall ; and it would be a great gain 
to such creatures if they possessed anything like a helpful 
parachute, as the so-called " flying " squirrels and " flying " 
opossums — animals which have such a help — in an exten- 
sion of the skin of the flanks. 

Bats are flying beasts now, and pterodactyls were flying 
reptiles in former ages. Whether any batrachian can in 
any sense be said to fly, we will not venture to affirm, 
but there is certainly one tree-frog which seems as if its 
feet might at least serve as a parachute. Mr. Alfred H. 
Wallace, in his travels in the Malay Archipelago, 
encountered in Borneo a creature which he declares to be 
" the first instance known of a flying frog." Of this 
animal he gives the following account ; " One of the 
most curious and interesting creatures which I met with 
in Borneo was a large tree frog which was brought me 
by one of the Chinese workmen. He assured me that he 



ro4 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

had seen it come down in a slanting direction, from a 
high tree, as if it flew. On examining it I found the toes 
very long and fully webbed to their extremity, so that 
when expanded they offered a surface much larger than 
the body. The fore legs were also bordered by a mem- 
brane, and the body was capable of considerable inflation. 
The body was about four inches long, while the webs of 
all the feet covered a space of about twelve square inches. 
As the. creature was a tree frog, it is difficult to imagine 
that this immense membrane of the toes can be for the 
purpose of swimming only, and the account of the China- 
men that it flew down from the tree becomes more 
credible." 

There are species of frogs and toads, some of them 
not otherwise difierent from their fellows, the young of 
which do not form gills, but develop some other breath- 
ing organs in their place. Thus, there is a kind of tree 
frog, belonging to the genus Hylodes, which has the 
habit of laying its eggs singly in the axils of leaves, and 
the only water they can obtain is the drop or two which 
may from time to time be retained there. The young is, 
most strange to say, provided with a special breathing organ 
in its tail. Another frog, with yet another abnormality, 
has been recently discovered by Mr. Guppy in the Solomon 
Islands. He tells us : " During a descent from one of 
the peaks of Paro Island, I stopped at a stream some 400 
feet above the sea, where my native boys collected from 
the moist crevices of the rocks close to the water a 
number of transparent, gelatinous balls, rather smaller 
than a marble. Each of these balls contained a young 
frog, about four lines in length. On my rupturing the 
ball, the tiny frog took a marvellous leap into existence, 
and disappeared before I could catch it." 

Thus these frogs are never tadpoles, nor was anything 



THE BULLFROG 



105 



in the shape of gills to be detected beside the neck, nor 
yet any tail. There were, however, certain folds on each 
side of the body which may turn out to be peculiar 
temporary breathing organs, like the respiratory tail of 
the Hylodes before mentioned. 

Another American tree frog, named Noiotrcma, has a 
Fig. 27. 





jagttossi*^-' " 



TKE PIPA. 




curious pouch which extends in the female over the whole 
of the back and opens posteriorly. Into this opening 
the eggs are introduced as soon as laid, and the young un- 
dergo their process of development in this large cutaneous 
maternal sac. Of course they have no opportunity of 
living the life of tadpoles. Neither have the young of the 
well-known kind next to be described. 

This latter kind is the great South American toad 
called the Pipa, whose mode of reproduction was at first 



io6 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

greatly, tbougli very naturally, misunderstood. The skin 
of the female's back, as the time for egg-laying approaches, 
thickens greatly and becomes of quite a soft and loose 
texture. The male, as soon as the eggs are laid, takes 
them up and imbeds them in this thick, soft skin, which 
closes over them. Each egg so enclosed then undergoes 
the process of development to the end, so that instead of 
coming forth as a tadpole, each young one comes forth as 
a very small but fully formed toad. Here again the 
young never develop gills. When the young have 
gone forth, a little pit or depression marks the spot 
where each egg was developed, and as many as 120 of 
these pits have been counted on the back of a single 
female. 

But a yet more singular mode of development takes 
place in another American frog which comes from Chili, 
and is known as Darwin's Rhinoderma. 

Here nothing special is to be seen in the female, but in 
the male a large sac or pouch is present and extends 
beneath the skin under the whole surface of the belly 
and lower jaw. No external opening into it is to be found 
until we open the frog's mouth, and then we find two 
apertures, which lead directly into it, placed on the floor 
of the mouth, one on either side of the tongue. There 
are many animals, the males of which will eat their own 
offspring if they get the chance. They, however, perform 
the act for their own pleasure or profit. Not so Darwin's 
RhinocUrwa. He takes his wife's eggs, indeed, into his 
mouth, but it is for their good, not his. He does not 
swallow them into his stomach, but passes them through 
the apertures on either side of his tongue into his great 
ventral pouch. There they develop and become lively 
young frogs, to the questionable comfort of their ex- 
emplary sire. When sufficiently developed, they make 



THE BULLFROG 107 

their way up into their father's mouth, and, from that 
gaping aperture, out into the \vide world. 

All frogs and toads are very much alike, the greatest 
differences depending on the tongue. Except one Ame- 
rican species, the Pipa, one African, and one Australian, 
which three have no tongue at all, all the frogs and 
toads have a tongue, which, unlike our own, is fixed 
in front and free behind. A certain Mexican species 
forms a single exception, and is like ourselves in the 
mode of its tongue's attachment to the mouth. 

All frogs and toads form together a very natural order 
of the class Batrachia, and this order of theirs is the 
order of "the tailless ones" — the Anoura, or, as they 
are sometimes called, the Ecaudata. Before, however, 
speaking of other batrachian orders and comparing the 
Anoura therewith, it may be interesting to our readers 
to be told of one or two exceptional points in the struc- 
ture of frogs and toads generally. 

The number of separate bones, or vertebrae, which 
makes up the backbone, vary in different animals ; but 
none have so few as the frogs and toads. They have but 
nine at the most, and many have, as the Pipa^ but seven. 
A long styhform bone is attached posteriorly to their 
vertebrae. The Anoura have also a noteworthy pecu- 
liarity in the foot. Our own feet are formed of seven 
short bones joined together in a cluster, and to these the 
bones of the toes are attached in front. The bones 
which are thus short and clustered in us, are short and 
clustered in all other animals save the frogs and toads 
and one or two animals (lemurs) which are often 
classed with monkeys. In these animals (frogs, toads, 
and certain lemurs) two of the bones which elsewhere 
are thus short, are lengthened out so as to form another 
segment to the hind limb. It is of course quite im- 



io8 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

possible to suppose that animals as diverse as frogs 
and those monkey-like animals the lemurs, could have 
gained this similarity of parts by inheritance. It is 
obviously a case of " the independent origin of similar 
structures." 

A very instructive change takes place in the develop- 
ment of the frog in those structures which answer to our 
own bone of the tongue. This bone in us consists of a 
median central portion and two pairs of processes called 
the greater (or hinder), and the lesser (or anterior) horns. 
The young tadpole has, as fishes have, a series of arches 
on either side of the throat supporting its gills. As the 
animal develops these arches grow smaller and smaller, 
till in the adult frog there comes to be- a tongue bone, 
with two pairs of processes or "horns" as in ourselves. 
It is the hinder pair of " horns " of the frog which 
are formed from its gill arches, and thence we learn that 
in our own pair of hinder, or greater, " tongue-bone 
horns " we have what answers to the gill arches of tad- 
poles and of fishes. Such is the case, because the gill 
arches of fishes answer to the gill arches of the tadpole. 

Having now passed in review the more interesting 
forms of frogs and toads — the order Anoura — it is time 
to inquire what are the creatures which form the second 
order of the Batrachia ? As they all have long tails the 
name of their order is Urodela, or, as it is sometimes 
called, Caudata. Some such creatures are to be found in 
most ponds in England and are familiar animals to every 
schoolboy, and are known as efts or newts. The whole 
world contains a hundred and one difierent kinds of them, 
but of these no less than fifty-five species are found in 
North America, while Australia and tropical Africa have 
neither of them a single species. Only two are found in 
the Indian region, and but nine, or at most ten, in tro- 



THE BULLFROG 



109 



pical j^merica, while the rest inhabit the northern portion 
of the Old World. Thus the order of newts is an order 
almost entirely confined to the northern hemisphere, 
whence a few struggle southward along the eastern 
Asiatic mountains or the Andes. China and Japan 
being the part of Asia nearest North America, are, as 
might be expected, rather rich in the number of their 
species. But it is not merely or mainly by the numbers 
of species that it contains that North America is thus 
Fig. 28, 




THE AMPHIUMA. 

distinguished. The singular interest of some of the 
forms peculiar to it is even yet more striking. The 
absolutely largest species is, however, found in Japan, 
where it sometimes attains the length of six feet. A 
closely allied species is found in northern China, and 
during the tertiary period one also inhabited Europe. 
Its remains were discovered in the early days of geolo- 
gical science, and were taken to be the skeleton of a child, 
a victim of Noah's deluge. A much smaller representa- 
tion of the Japanese giant left is found in all the tribu- 
taries of the Mississippi and the streams of Louisiana, as 
well as in North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, and 



no TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

is, at least in some places, known by the curious name of 
" hell-bender," A very singular form (Fig. 28), the Am- 
phiuma, is also to be met with in the Southern United 
States. It has much the aspect of an eel, but with two 
pairs of very minute limbs, situated far apart, each with 
but three or even but two toes. This creature is, or was, 
called by the negroes " Congo snake," and quite erro- 
neously regarded as very venomous. 

The next noteworthy form is a European one. It is 
the Proteus — a small, entirely aquatic animal found in the 
subterranean caverns of Carniola and Istria, in southern 



Fig. 29. 




THE PROTEUS. 

Austria. It is very elongated in form, with small and 
slender limbs and with as few toes, as the " Congo snake." 
Passing as it does the whole of its life in perpetual dark- 
ness, it is not surprising to find that it is blind, like 
so many inhabitants of American caverns. It is also 
colourless, except its gills, which project externally as a 
bright red tuft on either side of the hinder part of the 
head. These are constantly present, as this animal re- 
tains them during the whole of life, and is thus, so far, 
like a persistent young tadpole. The same thing occurs 
in two other species which inhabit the United States. 



THE BULLFROG in 

The first of these is more exceptional, in that it has no 
hind limbs at all, and only a very small pair of fore limbs. 
This is the Siren, specimens of which have come to the 
British JNIuseum from various parts of the United States, 
including South Carolina, Georgia, and Texas. The 
other American form with persistent gills is named 
Menohranchus. It is shorter in body, with two pairs of 
fairly developed limbs. It is a more northern animal, 
being found in Canada as well as the United States. 
There is a genus of efts, distinguished both from the 
number and considerable size of the species which com- 
pose it. It is named Amhhjstoma and contains seven- 
teen different species, all of which are Nortli American 



Fig. 30. 




THE AMBLYSTOMA. 

(ranging from the northern Rocky Mountains and Van- 
couver's Island to Mexico), with one exception — a single 
species which, strange to say, has found its way to the 
mountains of Siam ! All these species when full grown 
are quite destitute of gills, though almost all efts (like 
almost all frogs) pass through a stage of existence in 
which they do have them. 

There is a sort of eft in Mexico known as the Axolotl, 
which possesses large external gills. It seems a fully 
adult creature and breeds freely. Long ago, however, 
the great Cuvier considered that it probably was only 
an immature animal. 



112 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

A little less than twenty years ago, there were a 
number of axolotls living in the Jardin des Plantes at 
Paris, under the care of a very intelligent keeper. One 
day to his astonishment he missed one of his axolotls, 
but found in its place a very different-looking eft, and 
one without any gills. A little later the same thing 
Fig. 31. happened in the case of several 

of them, and thus it became 
known that the axolotl is but a 
big and precocious baby, ready 
to change rapidly, under certain 
conditions, into the form of an 
amblystoma. This change is a 
very remarkable one, because 
it by no means consists merely 
in the loss of the gills, but 
involves changes in the bones 
of the skull, the number and 
V arrangement of the teeth, as 
well as other important struc- 
tural transformations. The 
change was the more singular 
because, although the unchanged 
axolotls continued to breed 
freely in their immature con- 
dition without any care or 
trouble to their keeper, none 
THE AXOLOTL. ^f ^j^g transformed ones could 

be induced by any effort of his to do so. It seemed 
as if they had, on obtaining maturity, discarded all con- 
jugal family feelings as mere follies of youth. 

This curious change in the axolotl, and its long persist- 
ence in breeding in a condition which, as far as form 
and structure go, must be regarded as an immature one. 




THE BULLFROG 113 

suggests a question whether the siren, the proteus, and 
the menobranchus may not also be overgrown babies, 
which have now ceased altogether to assume the form 
which once was their mature one. Individuals of the 
commonest Enghsh species occasionally preserve some 
of the external characters of immaturity, in spite of 
having attained repi-oductive capability. The Alpine eft 
also very often breeds before attaining the form which 
that species normally exhibits. 

The true salamander — a very handsome black and 
yellow animal — is found from Holland to Spain, Algiers, 
and Syria. Like the pipa toad, it brings forth its young 
in the adult condition, they being born without gills. 
One result of the maturity they attain thus early is that 
one unborn brother sometimes devours another. Before 
birth they for a time have gills, and gills of relatively 
large size. Some curious experiments were tried on the 
dark Alpine variety of this animal by a Miss Von 
Chauvin. She took from the oviduct of a mother sala- 
mander some of its unborn young in that early stage 
of existence when they have large external gills. These 
specimens she placed in water, where the first effect of 
the disproportionately large size of their gills was that 
they were cast oif. Thereupon, new and much smaller 
gills appeared in their place, and lasted a long time — 
fourteen weeks in one instance. 

The curious and noteworthy point in this experiment 
is the fact that after the original gills (which were 
unadapted for free external life) had perished, new and 
suitable gills became developed, and this not in a struggle 
for existence against rivals, but directly and spontane- 
ously from the innate nature of the animal. 

The order of efts and the order of frogs include all 
the familiar forms of batrachian life. The next order 



114 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

contains only a few curious forms, which are confined to 
the warmer regions of the globe. The order which con- 
tains them is named Ophiomorpha (from their snake-like, 
legless condition), or sometimes Apoda. They are so 
strangely unlike the creatures hitherto described that no 
one would at first suppose they could have any affinity 
to frogs. 

They are creatures which are entirely destitute of 
limbs and have much the appearance of earthworms. . 
They are long and slender, and have a soft and naked 
skin marked by transverse, grooved rings. There are 
about thirty species, arranged in eleven genera. North 

Fig. 32. 



THE CCECILIA. 

America, Australia, and the northern part of the Old 
World, including all Europe, are entirely destitute of 
them. Their headquarters lie in tropical America, where 
one-and-twenty species have their home ; four hail from 
tropical Africa, and a like number from the Indian 
region. 

It is not surprising that these animals were classed 
with snakes by the earlier naturalists, and even by 
Cuvier. In spite of their small head, their being utterly 
deprived of limbs, and their elongated form, they have 
after all one notable point in common with those large- 
headed, long-limbed, and short-bodied creatures, the frogs. 
This point in common is the absence of the tail, for their 
elongated figure is due to the drawing out of the body, 
not to the presence of a tail. 



THE BULLFROG T15 

They are creatures which burrow beneath tlie soil 
(which habit increases their resemblance to earthworms) 
and feed on any small creatures they thus find, and also 
upon mould. 

JS'on -scientific persons may perhaps ask, Why should 
these worm-like, limbless creatures be grouped in the 
class Batrachia with frogs and efts ? It is an extremely 
natural question, but one which admits of a very easy 
and satisfactory reply, although we cannot venture here 
to inflict on our readers the strong dose of anatomy 
w^hich would be necessary to set out with any fulness 
what that reply is. We may, however, call attention to 
one character, as follows : No beast or bird or reptile 
develops gills at any time of life, while all the batra- 
chians do have them, and breathe by help of them at 
first, with the exception of a few species, the conditions 
of whose life render such aquatic breathing impossible 
for them. There are, indeed, as we have seen, very 
exceptional non-gilled forms, but these plainly and 
evidently are the brothers of those other kinds which 
do have gills, which form the overwhelming majority of 
the whole class. 

The frogs and toads (Anoura), the efts [Urodela), and 
the worm-like kinds {Oj^hiomorpha), comprise all the 
orders of existing batrachians. Another order, however, 
is known to us, but to obtain evidence of that order it 
is necessary to dig very deeply into the geological 
evidences of the past. 

When we begin our search into the geological records 
of bygone ages, we do not find evidence of anything 
startling or new in the tertiary or even in the upper 
secondary rocks. Frogs and efts have indeed been found 
in the tertiary strata, but they differ in no important 
way from their representatives of our own time. 



Ii6 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

When, however, we descend to the trias and car- 
boniferous rocks we come upon a great variety of extinct 
species of animals which have been hitherto regarded 
as being nearly allied to the three batrachian orders 
still existing. They constitute another — fourth — order, 
to which the term Lahyrinthodonta has been applied 
for a reason which will be stated shortly. Thus 
our search into the past has brought us a rich and 
important gain. The labyrinthodonts were creatures 
with long tails and mostly two pairs of limbs, but 
their limbs were always of relatively small size. Some 
species were very large, even exceeding the great sala- 
mander of Japan in size. Some of them had large 
and formidable teeth in long elongated jaws like those 
of alligators, and the structure of their teeth is very 
noteworthy. They are conical in shape and marked 
superficially by slight vertical grooves. If we make a 
horizontal section of one of their teeth we shall then see 
that these surface grooves are the external indications 
of deep indentations of the substance of the tooth. All 
these indentations converge toward the central long axis 
of the tooth, but do not converge in straight Hnes, each 
indentation being elaborately inflected. Kadiating from 
the central axis of the tooth we shall find in our section 
a corresponding number of grooves radiating outward 
from the tooth's central pulp cavity, these radiating folds 
passing between, and being inflected in undulations like, 
the converging grooves. Such a tooth is a beautiful 
object when examined with a good magnifying glass, and 
the markings thus produced by so many radiating and 
converging folds (undulating and alternating in regular 
order) are so complicated and labyrinthic, that labyrinthic 
tooth becomes an appropriate name for the members of 
this singular order. Its members were doubtless aquatic 



THE BULLFROG 117 

in habit, as are almost all existing batrachians ; but to 
which group of the latter can these ancient monsters be 
considered to have affinity ? It is quite impossible to 
affii^m that they in any way tend to bridge over the 
chasm which separates the frogs from the efts. They 
appear, indeed, to have been almost equally removed 
from both. It is not impossible that they may find their 
nearest existing allies among the worm-like Ophiomorpha. 
There is a curious resemblance between the skulls of 
these two groups, which also agree in containing more 
bones than do those of the members of the other two 
orders. Moreover, some labyrinthodonts appear to have 
been entirely deprived of limbs. Nevertheless, their 
largely developed tail constitutes a marked distinction 
between them and the Ophiomorpha. 

It is somewhat singular that in spite of their predomi- 
nating aquatic habit all batrachians appear to inhabit 
fresh wa^ter only, and they are thus the only class of 
backboned animals which have no marine representatives. 
But as regards the labyrinthodonts, it is very probable 
that many new and strange forms will come to light, and 
we look forward with great interest to such a revelation 
with regard to these air-breathing animals of the carbon- 
iferous epoch, which, so far as we know, were about the 
earliest air-breathing vertebrates. We have noted 
already, in describing the turkey, how different forms 
of reptilian life preceded and represented the beast life 
of our own age — its whales, its bats, its cattle, and its 
beasts of prey. Reptiles represented them during the 
vast epoch which continued while the secondary rocks 
were being deposited. The number and variety of 
labyrinthodonts already found suggests the idea that a 
great wealth of batrachian life may have preceded and 
represented the reptile life of the secondary age. They 



Ii8 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

may have represented its crocodiles, ichthyosauri, dino- 
saurs, &c., during the vast epoch which continued while 
the carboniferous rocks were being deposited. 

This, however, is as yet a mere speculation. What is 
certain is that the batrachians stand (as before said) 
between reptiles and fishes. To the fishes they are 
manifestly allied through their possession of gills and 
the aquatic respiration they aloiost all practise during 
the earlier stages of their existence. There are also 
other anatomical points of resemblance, which it would 
be tedious here to describe. On the other side they 
exhibit a striking dift'ereuce from all fishes and a close 
resemblance to reptiles and higher vertebrates in the 
structure of their limbs. In ourselves we have an 
upper and lower limb-segment to botli arm and leg, 
we have a cluster of small bones in the root of both 
hand and foot, and we have fingers and toes (both 
called in zoology digits) proceeding therefrom. With 
varying degrees of defect, the same essential structure of 
limb exists in all reptiles and higher vertebrates, but no 
such structure exists in any kind of fish. Reptiles have, 
fishes have not, this " typical differentiation," as it is 
called, of the limbs. Thus, batrachians let us down 
gently, as it were, to the class of fishes, while retaining a 
firm grasp — with their typically differentiated limbs — on 
the class of reptiles. They do so in different degrees, 
there being but a temporary affinity to piscine respiration 
in the frogs, though a permanent one in the proteus and 
the siren. 

While differing insignificantly in structure among 
themselves, we have seen how very widely frogs all 
differ from the other orders of their class — that is, from 
the efts {Urodela), the worm-like group {Ophiomorpha), 
and the primitive batrachian group {Lahyrinthodontd), 



THE BULLFROG I19 

The bullfrog, indeed, pertains to an order far more 
distinct from the other orders of its class than is man's 
order from the various orders which compose his own 
class, the class of mammals. It also belongs to an order 
which is singularly homogeneous, and yet to a class 
(Batrachia), which compared with that of birds is very 
heterogeneous. 

It is an animal which differs from every member of 
the higher classes of vertebrates in that it comes into 
the world with a structure and with habits which con- 
trast most forcibly with its structure and habits when 
adult. In fact, it undergoes a metamorphosis ! 

If, then, we are asked. What is a bullfrog ? we may 
reply : " It is a very large North American species of 
the genus Rana, a genus of an order of tailless, lung- 
breathing, gilled vertebrates, with fore limbs typically 
differentiated and undergoing a distinct metamorphosis, 
its order being one of those four which makes up the 
class Batrachia." 

Such is our reply to the question as to what the frog 
is ; but we may further ask how did it come to be — what 
was the origin of frogs ? We may also, on the principle 
of evolution, and seeing how very ancient the frog's class 
is, be asked what forms may be supposed to have sprung 
from it? Of what existing creatures, which are not 
Batrachia, can batrachians be supposed to have been the 
ancestors ? 

In the early days of the promulgation of the theory of 
evolution nothing seemed easier than to answer such 
questions. Genealogical trees of animal life were set up 
by very many naturalists — most conspicuously of all by 
Prof. Haeckel of Jena — with eagerness. Soon, however, 
they were found to need pruning, then " lopping and 
topping," and finally not a few have we seen cut down or 



I20 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

torn up by the roots. Some of our own modest shrubs 
we have come to believe merit the same fate, though we 
have not to answer for much such arboriculture, on 
account of our having from the first believed in and 
called attention to the "independent origin of different 
structures."* 

It was at one time believed rather widely that the eft 
group sprung, through the labyrinthodonts, from certain 
air-breathing fishes, and, in turn, gave rise to frogs on 
the one hand and to beasts and reptiles on the other. 
This may be all very true, but as yet we must regard it 
as a mere speculation, without any sufficient evidence of 
its truth to hinder us keeping quite "an open mind" 
about it. We have already seen, with respect , to the 
opossum's order and class, how two different and con- 
tradictory hypotheses may be suggested by one set of 
facts. As to the above-mentioned belief we do not think 
there can be any reasonable doubt about its first article 
— that batrachians sprang from fishes. What kind of 
fishes those were, however, we do not know. It is also 
most probable that frogs did also spring from eft-like 
creatures, but the utter absence to his time of any 
discovered links between the two is very remarkable. 

But the once asserted direct affinity between batrachians 
and beasts we do not at all believe in, or in any affinity 
between existing batrachians and reptiles, though very 
probably the first reptiles sprang directly from some 
ancestor or collateral relative of the labyrinthodonts. 
The resemblance of frogs to tortoises and terrapins has 
often been remarked, and it is remarkable. It is clearly, 
however, but an instance of the independent origin of 
similar structures, and a direct descent of tortoises from 
frogs is quite incredible. It is none the less interesting 

* In our " Genesis of Species," 1870. 



THE BULLFROG I2I 

to note that in the mud-tortoises we have the bony 
plates of the shell greatly reduced and surrounded by 
soft skin, while in two kinds of frogs the skin of the 
back becomes furnished with bony plates which are 
complete representatives of those of the tortoise, though 
much smaller. 

Again, the turtle is exceptional among reptiles for 
such an extension of some of the skull bones as to give 
the brain case a deceptive appearance as to size. The 
very same thing is also found in two members of the 
frog's order. How cautious it is necessary to be in 
attributing such similarities to special inheritance has 
been strikingly shown by the discovery in an African 
animal belonging to the rat's order (Rodentia) of the very 
same kind of extension of the bones of the skull. 
Building upon such resemblances it might be supposed 
that frogs were the parents of tortoises, efts of lizards, 
and the worm-like ophiomorpha of snakes. But here 
we hope enough has been said to show that such a view 
is utterly false, as also to impress on our readers a 
wholesome caution as to wild speculation and hasty 
generalisation in matters zoological. 

While keeping our minds free from prejudice and 
ready to receive all and any truth which may be demon- 
strable, we must be scientijfically exacting in our demand 
for evidence with respect to all hypotheses put before us. 



V 
THE RATTLESNAKE 

America has the privilege of possessing a varieby of 
interesting animals found nowhere else in the whole earth, 
such as many kinds of apes, opossums, and numerous birds; 
above all, its lovely humming birds, the exclusive possession 
of which every other quarter of the world may well envy. 
But it also possesses exclusively some creatures, the 
presence of which will not excite envy in other geographical 
regions. Among these are the rattlesnakes, which, in their 
various varieties, range from Southern Canada down to 
Patagonia. But, deadly and dreadful as they are, they 
are creatures nevertheless full of interest for persons who 
love the study of Nature, her works and ways among 
living things. The rattlesnake has an interest for a 
variety of reasons — (i) on its own account, (2) as one of 
a small group of poisonous serpents, which includes also 
forms which are not rattlesnakes, (3) on account of the 
relation in which it stands to all other snakes, and (4) as 
being a snake at all ; for every snake is a very remark- 
able animal, and probably many of my readers do not 
know what a snake really is. If so, then they necessarily 
must have but a very imperfect comprehension of the 
deadly American reptile. To be able in a satisfactory 
manner to answer the question, "What is a rattle- 
snake?" we must know something definite as to what 
any snake is, as compared with all creatures which are 



Fig. 33. 




THE COMMON RATTLESNAKE. 



124 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

not snakes ; as to what snakes are, considered as a group 
in themselves ; and as to what are the exact resemblances 
and differences which rattlesnakes, and every particular 
kind of rattlesnake, bear to all other kinds of serpents. 

Of rattlesnakes there are at least a dozen, probably 
fifteen, different species, though there are a good many 
varieties ; a fact which makes them difficult to define. 
The kind most common east of the Mississippi is 
popularly known as the "banded rattlesnake," and 
ranges at least from Maine to Texas. At one time it 
was very common in Eastern Massachusetts, where it is 
now, happily, very rare indeed, and only common in 
thinly inhabited districts of more Southern and Western 
States. It varies a good deal in colour, and may be 
mainly brownish, yellowish, or blackish, while a series of 
dark spots, frequently edged with yellow and of very 
variable shape, run along the back and sides. The head 
is very large, much flattened and triangular in shape, 
the exterior angle being rounded. One very noticeable 
feature is a deep pit which is placed between the eye and 
the nostrils on either side of the head. The use of this 
structure remains unknown. The snake often attains 
a large size, that is, five feet in length. It feeds on 
rabbits, squirrels, rats, &c., and is for the most part slow 
and sluggish, waiting quietly until some suitable prey 
approaches it. The notion formerly entertained that the 
rattlesnake can charm or fascinate other creatures is a 
mere superstition, now quite exploded. But its sluggish- 
ness makes it dangerous, as it may be unknowingly 
stepped upon. Yet it never attacks spontaneously, or 
pursues a retreating enemy. 

The structure from which the animal takes its name — 
the "rattle" — consists mainly of three or more solid 
horny rings placed at the end of the tail. These rings 



THE RATTLESNAKE 125 

themselves are mere modifications of the general skin 
of the body, but the " rattle " has a more solid foundation. 
The real tail of birds (as we saw when considering the 
turkey) is made up of a short fleshy structure supported 
by a special modification of the terminal segments of the 
backbone. The same is the case with respect to the 
rattle of this serpent. Its three terminal segments (or 
vertebrae) become united together into one solid whole, 
and also become enlarged in size and specially modified 
in form, being swollen at the hinder end. This bony 
structure is covered with a special development of the 
soft deeper skin from which all the outer skin and 
scales of the body are formed, the soft structure being so 
subdivided by grooves as to form three segmen ts, which 
themselves become coated with three corresponding dense 
layers of outer skin, or, as it is technically called 
" epidermis," thus forming three horny rings. These con- 
stitute all the rattle there is in young snakes which have 
not yet shed their skin. Snakes and men shed their skin 
differently. In us the outer skin is thrown off in very 
minute separate portions, so that the process is not ordi- 
narily, noticed. In snakes all the skin is shed at once as 
one continuous whole — even the skin of the eyeballs 
being shed with the rest, and thus snakes get a little 
blind during the process of its detachment. When the 
first moult in rattlesnakes draws near, fresh skin is formed 
beneath the old covering of the hinder end of the tail. 
When the moult actually takes place, the old covering 
of the tail end is not cast off (being held by the swollen 
end of the bone before noted), but remains as a loose 
appendage, thus becoming the first formed joint of the 
future perfect rattle. The rattle, in fact, grows perfect 
by the accumulation of rings in this manner, one being 
thus made loose and yet retained, at each succeeding 



126 TYPES OF ANII^IAL LIFE 

moult, while more than one moult takes place in each 
year. Thus the rattle ultimately consists of a number of 
dry, hard, more or less loose, horny rings. The older of 
these wear away in time and are lost, but a snake may 
have as many as twenty-one ratthng rings. 

It is the shaking of these rings by a violent and 
rapid wagging of the end of the tail that produces the 
noted sound — a sound which may be compared to the 
rattling of peas quickly shaken in a paper bag But this 
habit of shaking rapidly the end of the tail is by no 
means peculiar to the rattlesnake. It occurs in many 
other species of serpents, both venomous and harmless 
ones. It is probably a natural and spontaneous result of 
emotional excitement, like the wagging of a dog's tail. 
Any nervous excitement tends to produce some bodily 
movement, and naturally results in the motion of any 
part most easily moved — as the end of the tail, whenever 
a due supply of muscle exists to produce it. The mean- 
ing or use of the rattle is a problem still awaiting solution. 
It has been supposed to be useful in paralysing animals, 
through terror excited by the sound ; in arousing curiosity 
and so bringing animals within its reach ; as enabling 
the sexes to find each other; or by saving the snake 
from attack when its power of offence temporarily has 
been exhausted. But no sufficient evidence known to us 
lends adequate support to any of these ingenious specu- 
lations. 

Among the various species of rattlesnake is the kind 
called the "horned rattler," on account of a pair of 
horny prominences it possesses, one above each eye. It 
is found in California and Mexico. 

The deadly bite of the rattlesnake is effected by means 
of a very ingenious and simple mechanism. It is a 
popular error to suppose that the rapidly vibrating cleft 



THE RATTLESNAKE 127 

tongue of the creature, so often protruded from the front 
of its muzzle, is its "sting"; the rattlesnake poisons by 
biting, and the only practical sting it possesses consists of 
a pair of peculiarly modified teeth. The lower jaw is 
furnished on either side with a series of small, simple- 
pointed teeth, and two series of small, simple-pointed teeth 
traverse the palate from before backward. The outer 
margin of the uppor jaw, however, has nothing of the kind, 
but is furoished instead on either side with one large, 
pow^erful curved and very pointed tooth, which is the 
" poison fang." This poison fang is very deeply grooved 
in front. It is, indeed, grooved so deeply that the two 
margins of the groove quite join in front, save at its upper 
and lower ends; the groove is thus practically converted 
into a canal which traverses the substance of the tooth. 
Into the upper unclosed end of the groove a small tube 
passes, and this conveys the poison from the gland which 
secretes it, into the cavity of the tooth. It then passes 
down the canal and escapes from the small unclosed end of 
the groove which opens near the point of the tooth. The 
poison gland is placed on either side of the upper jaw 
(extending backward beyond the eye), and the poison 
itself is but a form of saliva. Its deadly effect almost 
every one knows. Even if an adult man escapes with 
his life he must suffer from prolonged illness and often 
from the loss of a limb. When the rattlesnake is at 
rest, the poison fangs lie back against the roof of the 
mouth, but when excited, as he opens his mouth the 
fangs become erected by a peculiar mechanism which 
cannot be here described, as its description would involve 
so many technical anatomical details. Suffice it to say, 
that when, being erected, the snake strikes, his poison 
fangs bury themselves in the flesh of his victim, while 
simultaneously the poison is ejected down the canal which 



128 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

traverses each of them. The feeling of anger also doubt- 
less sets the poison glands secreting, just as the sight of 
good food will make a hungry man's mouth water — i.e., 
will set similar glands secreting in the man's mouth. The 
rattlesnake strikes its prey to kill it, and, having struck, 
waits quietly till it dies. Then it begins to devour it at 
leisure, not again using its fangs, but only the small teeth 
before mentioned. It always devours its prey entire, 
and can swallow an animal much thicker than its own 
body. In fact, the creature does not so much swallow 
its prey as slowly drag itself over the creature it devours, 
being enabled so to do by the elasticity of its skin, 
and by the extraordinarily loose condition of the teeth- 
bearing bones of its jaws. Thus the two halves of the lower 
jaw and the several pieces which compose the upper jaw can 
be stretched far apart and separately moved, so that, while 
the dead victim is securely held by some of them, others 
can be moved and implanted further on, and thus, by 
degrees, 7tG body is drawn within the gullet of the snake. 
Even when it has passed into the stomach the form of 
the prey may be visible for some time, but digestion 
takes place very quickly. The rattlesnake has no rudi- 
ment of a hmb, and its movements are effected by nothing 
but its backbone and ribs, with the aid of the muscles 
thereto annexed (which are very numerous and complex), 
and that of the large transverse scales which clothe the 
abdomen. The ribs are very movable, and their lower 
ends are connected to the inside of these scales. Thus 
the snake's motion may in part be compared with that 
of a centipede, the successive opposite pairs of movable 
ribs practically serving as so many pairs of feet. It is 
thus, with the aid of the ribs and scales, that the rattle- 
snake progresses by taking advantage of the various 
irregularities of the surface over which it moves. On a 



THE RATTLESNAKE 129 

perfectly smooth surface it can make no advance at all. 
It is common enough to see serpents represented in 
figures as bending their body in a series of vertical folds. 
This is another mistake. A snake's body can be bent 
only from side to side. 

The rattlesnakes form part of a small group of serpents 
some of which have no rattle. They all agree, however, 
in being very poisonous and in having the curious pit 
already described as placed between the nose and the 
eye. The whole group (rattlesnakes included) are there- 
fore spoken of as " pit vipers." Some of the pit vipers 
which are not rattlesnakes are found in the Old World, 
while others are (like rattlesnakes) American reptiles. 
Among the latter are the copperhead and water-moccasin 
of the Carolinas and Texas (so dreaded by workers in rice 
plantations), and the even more ferocious fer-de-lance of 
the West Indies, which attacks without warning, and is 
said to have been the main cause of death among the 
labourers in sugar plantations, wherein it finds shelter 
and often multiplies prodigiously. Lastly may be men- 
tioned Bushmaster (Lachesis) of tropical America, which 
seems to be the largest poisonous land snake known, 
as it is said to be sometimes fourteen feet long. In the 
Old World a dozen species of pit vipers are found, in 
India one species ascending as high as 10,000 feet above 
the sea in the Himalayan mountains. 

The whole group of pit vipers, including the rattlesnakes, 
foiiis but one subordinate section of the great order of 
serpents, which order contains as many as 1500 species 
at the least. These are generally divided into the 
poisonous and non-poisonous snakes ; but such a division 
is not a natural one, for some poisonous snakes are 
much more closely related to the non-poisonous kinds 
than they are to the other venomous forms. The non- 



130 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

poisonous kinds are far the more numerous, but never- 
theless some 20,000 human beings are killed every year 
in India alone by venomous serpents. 

No distinct chemical principle has yet been detected in 
the poisonous saliva, but such a thing there must be in 
the different kinds of snakes, seeing that after a fatal 
bite from a rattlesnake or viper, the victim's blood will 
not coagulate, while after a fatal bite from a cobra it will 
still do so. It has also been ascertained that if the blood 
of a bitten animal be injected into a healthy one, the 
latter will be poisoned just as if it had been bitten itself, 
although its flesh may be eaten with impunity. It is a 
mistake, however, to suppose that snake's poison can 
have no effect unless actually mixed with the blood. It 
will act after being absorbed through such delicate skin 
as that which lines our lips, though its action is then less 
powerful. 

The effect of snake bite depends partly on the condition 
of the snake, partly on that of the person bitten. If the 
snake has bitten shortly before, or if it is not in a vigor- 
ous state, its effect will be more or less diminished; 
while it is increased if the person bitten is weakly, very 
nervous, or a child. As to nervousness, some persons 
are said to have died merely of fright. Of course, some- 
thing depends on the part of the body bitten, a bite being 
especially fatal if the fangs actually penetrate a large 
blood-vessel. The bite of a rattlesnake has been known 
to produce almost instant death. No effectual antidote 
has as yet been discovered. Ammonia and permanganate 
of potassium are ineffectual, although a solution of the 
latter wiU take away the poisonous effects of the snake's 
secretion if it be mixed with it. Immediate amputation 
of the bitten toe or finger is the best course, as the delay 
of a few seconds will suffice to convey the poison into the 



THE RATTLESNAKE 131 

patient's circulation. If amputation cannot be thus per- 
formed, a very tight ligature, with sucking and cauterising 
the wound and the administration of stimulants inter- 
nally, are recommended as the best treatment. 

The whole order of serpents may, for our present 
purpose, be divided conveniently into four great groups : 
A, viperine snakes ; B, colubrine snakes, so called from 
the name coluber, applied to a large genus of these 
snakes in both hemispheres, and originally instituted by 
Linnaeus ; C, boa-like snakes, and, D, worm-Kke snakes. 
Having selected the rattlesnake as our type, we will begin 
with the first section, A. 

This consists of two groups, the true vipers, such as the 
common English viper, and the pit vipers. The latter 
we have already considered. The true vipers are as 
exclusively confined to the Old World as are the rattle- 
snakes to America. Among the latter we have noted 
one as being termed the horned rattler. The same 
epithet is most justly applied to various true vipers, 
some of which have horns over the eyes, while others 
have two such structures on the nose. Among the 
former is the famed Cerastes of Africa, which imagination 
has connected with Cleopatra. A far more magnificent 
creature is the rhinoceros viper (Fig. 34). It is a very 
deadly animal, which may be more than six feet long and 
beautifully coloured, with a pair of long horns upstand- 
ing from between its nostrils. There are at least twenty 
kinds of true vipers, and such are the only poisonous 
reptiles of Europe. Bussell's viper, known as the " tic- 
polonga," or Daboia, is one of the most deadly snakes of 
India, while it is so sluggish that very often it wall not 
move out of a man's way. Another most dangerous 
viper, though a small one, is the Echis, which is found in 
desert regions from Morocco to the middle of Hindostan. 



132 



TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



Though httle raore than two feet long, it is not only- 
fierce, but positively aggressive, while its poison is so 
active that a fowl dies about two minutes after being 
bitten. Two or three species of vipers of slender form 
and adapted for tree life are also found in Africa. 



Fig 34. 




THE RHINOCEROS VIPER. 



Tlie colubrine section of serpents (B) contains the 
great majority of the species which compose the order, 
including the commonest harmless snakes of Europe and 
ISTorth America, such as the black snake, the corn snake, 
the milk snake, and the chicken snake. The genus to 
which the common ringed snake of England belongs, 
ranges throughout the temperate region of the northern 
hemisphere. Other kinds there are which are very 



THE RATTLESNAKE 133 

deadly, such as the cobra and various harlequin snakes. 
But, innocent or harmless, all these snakes, instead of 
having the great, conspicuous poison fangs of the rattlers 
and vipers, have a series of teeth extending along either 
side of both the jaws, as well as two rows of teeth in the 
palate — six rows in all. They feed, however, as does the 
rattlesnake, but with the disadvantage of having to over- 
come and engulf a prey still living. The common 
English snake will eat mice, lizards, or young birds, but 
its favourite delicacy is the common frog. When pur- 
sued by a snake, the frog seems to be half paralysed 
with fear, leaping less and less powerfully as the snake 
comes upon it. It is usually seized by the hind leg, 
but should it be taken by the middle of the body the 
snake invariably turns it till, by dexterous movements of 
its jaws, the frog's head comes to be directed toward the 
throat of the snake, and then it is swallowed head fore- 
most. In menageries two or more snakes will often 
seize upon the same frog, when each one begins to 
swallow it from the point to which it has attached itself. 
Soon, however, the jaws of the rival snakes come in con- 
tact, and then follows a decisive struggle. On one such 
occasion Mr. Bell, the late well-known English naturalist, 
observed such a contest. He tells us (" British Reptiles," 
p. 51), that "On placing a large frog in a box in which 
were several snakes, one of the latter instantly seized it 
by one of its hinder legs, and immediately afterward 
another of the snakes took forcible possession of the fore 
leg of the opposite side. Each continued its inroads 
upon the poor frog's limbs and body, until at length the 
upper jaws of the snakes met, and one of them in the 
course of its progress slightly bit the jaws of the other. 
After one or two such accidents the more powerful of the 
snakes commenced shaking the other, which still had 



134 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

hold of the frog, with great violence against the sides of 
the box. After a few moment's rest the other returned 
to the attack, and at length the one which had last seized 
the frog, having a less firm hold, was shaken off, and the 
victor swallowed the prey." The frog is generally ali\e, 
not only during the process of deglutition, but even after 
it has passed into the stomach. Mr. Bell once saw a very 
small one which had been swallowed by a large snake in 
my possession hop again out of the mouth of the latter, 
which happened to gape, as they frequently do imme- 
diately after taking food. On another occasion he heard 
a frog distinctly utter its peculiar cry several minutes 
after it had been swallowed by the snake. 

This reptile is easily tamed, and will learn to dis- 
tinguish those who feed and caress it. It will sometimes 
nestle spontaneously within the folds of its master's 
garments and hiss at a stranger who would meddle 
with it. 

One hundred and twelve species of harmless colubrine 
snakes inhabit India. Among the most attractive are 
the delicate tree snakes {Deiidrophis), which very rarely 
descend to the ground, finding food enough among the 
birds and those kinds of frogs and Hzards which also 
dwell in trees. 

The venomous colubrines differ from the others in 
having some or other of the teeth of their upper jaws 
grooved. Amongthem are other tree snakes (i)?*^sas) found 
in xAfrica, South Asia and North Australia, and singularly 
beautiful in coloration, and the yet more slender arbo- 
real whip snakes, with very long pointed heads [Dryophis), 
which are nocturnal in habit, and feed mainly on birds. 
One kind is very handsome, being black with a multitude 
of golden spots. A closely allied Indian form is very 
singular in its resemblance to a curious African kind, 



THE RATTLESNAKE 135 

which might be called the "gullet-toothed snake" for 
the following reason : If its jaws be opened they will be 
found to contain but a few exceedingly minute teeth, but 
if the finger be passed down its throat, then a series of 
bony prominences projecting down from the under sur- 
face of the backbone and the upper wall of the gullet. 
Each of these bony prominences is capped with enamel, 
and acts as a true tooth. These snakes feed on eggs, and 
are so notorious that they are known in Cape Colony as 
the " egg eaters." Now, a snake's mouth is not bordered 
by any fleshy lips, and if this snake were to crack an egg 
in its mouth, most of the contents would run out and be 
lost. Accordingly it swallows each hen's egg whole, and 
then, when safely within the gullet, it squeezes and 
breaks the egg against the curious teeth of its backbone. 
Thus the nutritious contents of the egg is secured, and 
the waste, otherwise inevitable, entirely avoided. 

The above-mentioned harlequin snakes of America 
(Elaps) are very handsome reptiles, their bodies being 
encircled with black, red, and yellow rings, as are also 
some American snakes which are not venomous. They 
are not large, rarely exceeding three feet in length, 
while both their mouths and poison fangs are small. 
Added to this, they only bite under great provocation, so 
that they should be Httle dreaded. 

Forms allied to these snakes and those next to be 
described constitute the bulk of the serpents of Australia, 
that region of the world being distinguished from all the 
others by having the decided majority of its snakes 
venomous. 

A small serpent of south-eastern Asia, called Adeni- 
ophis, is very remarkable for the exceptional size of its 
poison glands, which extend back for fully one -third of 
the reptile's entire length, so as to push the heart back 



136 



TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



much behind its usual place. We have as yet no inform- 
ation as to what may be the special utility to the animal 
of such an extraordinary supply of venom. 

No snakes, not even the rattlesnakes, are more 



Fig. 35. 




THE INDIAN COBRA. 



dreaded, and with reason, than are the cobras, also 
called " hooded " or " spectacled " snakes. As the 
rattlesnake warns the ear by its significant rattle, so the 
cobra warns the eye by the mode in which it expands 
the hood when irritated. The " hood " is a lateral 



THE RATTLESNAKE 137 

expansion of the body just behind the head. This 
flattened expansion is produced by the sudden eleva- 
tion of the ribs there situated, which stretch out the 
skin of either side as they rise. On the back of this 
hood there is a peculiar mark, roughly, like a pair of 
spectacles, hence the second trivial name of the 
creature. 

It is the cobra which is chosen by the so-called 
*' snake charmers " of both Egypt and India for their 
performances. The Egyptian ones sometimes pretend 
to change the serpent into a rod, and according to a 
French naturalist (G. St. Hilaire) this appearance can 
be produced by giving a strong squeeze to the neck, 
so inducing a convulsive rigidity, from which it soon 
recovers. It need hardly be said that snake charmers 
always carefully extract the fangs of their snakes before 
plajdng with them. The danger of otherwise touching 
such animals was sadly illustrated a few years ago by the 
act of a keeper of the Zoological Gardens of London, 
who incautiously took hold of one in his hand, and was 
immediately bitten. Before any effective aid could be 
rendered, the unfortunate man was a corpse. The 
Indian cobra attains more than six feet in length, and is 
the most generally fatal of all Indian serpents, being so 
common and widespread. It is found from the shores of 
the Caspian and southern China to the end of the Indian 
Archipelago. A second Indian kind, the snake- eating 
snake, is far larger and fiercer than the first. It may 
be fourteen feet in length, and is said actually to pursue 
and attack men. Fortunately it is much less common 
than the smaller species, though its distribution is as 



The African cobra ranges from Egypt to the Cape of 
Good Hope, and that it was well known in northern 



138 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

Africa thousands of years ago, is shown by its constant 
appearance in Egyptian hieroglyphics. Two other 
African kinds are known as the " sheep-stinger " and the 
''spitting snake." The latter is especially bold and 
active, readily attacking any one who approaches near it. 
In confinement it is generally very savage, opening its 
mouth and erecting its fangs, from which poison often 
may be observed to drop, and sometimes even to be ejected 
forcibly by the pressure of the jaw muscles on the poison 
glands. It is this circumstance which has given the 
serpent its name. The last group of colubrine snakes to 
which reference will be made here, is a very singular one. 
The existence of the famed sea serpent has been much 
disputed, but that sea serpents, not so famed, really exist 
it is utterly impossible to deny. There are about fifty 
species of these marine reptiles, all highly poisonous, but 
not practically dangerous, as they never quit the water 
and swim away rapidly at the least alarm. Their main 
home is the Indian Ocean, extending thence tow^ard 
Madagascar, down to the coast of Australia, and across 
the Pacific to the western coast of South America. 
They also advance northward to the shores of Japan. 
Like all other serpents, they are air-breathers, and to 
help them to rise quickly to the surface of the water and 
to swim with rapidity the end of the tail is flattened 
from side to side. In order to breathe the more easily 
and securely, their nostrils are placed at the very end of 
the muzzle, and are protected with valves to secure them 
from an unwelcome influx of water. 

Unlike other snakes, they cast their skin in small 
pieces, and unlike most snakes, though not unlike vipers, 
they bring forth their young alive without laying eggs. 
Their progeny can, of course, swim as soon as they are 
born. Their eyes are not adapted to see well out of 




THE TWO-COLOURED SEA-SNAKE. 



140 



TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



water, and thus they cannot take good aim to bite. 
They cannot even live on land, nor has any one yet 
succeeded in retaining them alive for any considerable 




THE -BOA-CONSTRICTOR. 



time in an aquarium. They feed on small fishes, which 
they paralyse with their poison and so have nothing to 
fear from their spines. 

Snakes of the boa-like section (C) are few in number, 



THE RATTLESNAKE 141 

but are the giants of the serpent order. They consist 
of two groups, distinguished by no very striking differ- 
ence : (i) the boas, and (2) the pythons. The former are 
confined exclusively to America and Australia and the 
tropical Pacific Islands, while the pythons are mostly 
from the Old World. 

The kind so familiar by name, the boa constrictor, is 
found from the northern part of Central America to 
southern Brazil, and is very often seen in menageries. 
It is not a very large creature generally, not being much 
above seven feet in length, though it may attain four- 
teen. The boas and pythons both agree with and diflfer 
from the viperine snakes as regards their mode of feeding. 
They agree with them in that before proceeding to 
devour a prey they kill it. They difier from them in 
that they do not poison their prey, since they have no 
poison fangs or any grooved teeth. They kill their 
victims by crushing, and they perform the act with 
amazing rapidity. 

We have often observed boas and pythons do this 
in captivity, and can afl&rm that the rabbits and 
duck introduced into their cages are entirely desti- 
tute of fear or apprehension and sufifer nothing until 
they are seized, and then their sufferings are extremely 
brief. Such a serpent, if disposed to feed — to attain 
which disposition it often needs a fast of several weeks 
— will move slowly about till it brings its mouth opposite 
to the muzzle of the rabbit. Then in an instant its 
mouth is opened and the rabbit's head is seized, while 
simultaneously the voluminous folds of the powerful 
body are twined round it, and it is crushed immediately 
to death. The serpent does not at once uncoil its folds 
but continues for a time tightly to embrace its victim, 
so that reanimation becomes impossible. Then the 



142 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

monster slowly unwinds, takes the head of its prey in 
its mouth, and, by successively implanting, withdrawing 
and advancing its six rows of teeth (four in the upper 
jaw and two in the lower, as before described) gradually 
drags itself over the body of its victim till the latter 
is finally engulfed. The anaconda of tropical America is 
the largest serpent of the boa group. Its whole body is 
ornamented with dark round spots, and may attain a 
length of thirty feet. It is more or less aquatic in its 
habits, tenanting the banks of rivers and lakes, and 
lying in wait for animals which come to drink. It 
will kill and swallow a peccary or deer, the anterior 
parts of its body becoming, of course, enormously dilated 
during the process of deglutition. This process is greatly 
facilitated by a very copious secretion of saliva, with 
which the creature swallowed is abundantly lubricated. 
After a hearty meal it will, as before said, make a long 
fast. An anaconda in the London Zoological Gardens 
once remained more than three months without eating. 

The pythons or rock snakes, as they are also called, 
are, as before said, mostly Old World forms. Three kinds 
are known in Africa and two in Asia, and some snakes 
which are similar, save that they are much smaller, are 
also found in Australia and New Guinea. Pythons may 
also attain a length of thirty feet, and will easily swallow 
a half-grown sheep. We have several times seen a python 
take three rabbits in rapid succession, or a rabbit and a 
pair of ducks. Pythons are fierce animals (save, of 
course, when in the torpid condition after food), but they 
are never spontaneously aggressive as regards man. 

Most snakes lay eggs, but some of them, notably 
vipers and sea snakes, as before observed, hatch their 
eggs internally and so bring forth their young alive. 
Snakes' eggs have no hard shell like that of birds' eggs 



THE RATTLESNAKE 143 

but are enclosed in a leathery case, oblong in shape. 
The pythons actually incubate their eggs, as was first 
ascertained in the Jardin des Plantes at Paris. The 
female arranged her eggs in a conical heap and twined 
herself around them, her ever- watchful head surmounting 
the summit of the cone. The period of incubation will 
last two months, during which she will not feed, though 
she has been known to drink copiously if water were 
presented to her by her keepers. In spite of the generally 
cold-blooded condition of snakes (as of other reptiles), it 
has been well ascertained that the temperature of the 
mother is raised distinctly higher than that of the sur- 
rounding atmosphere during the process of incubation. 

Various forms of small snakes, which here need not be 
separately noticed, lead us to our last section (D). 

Its members indeed widely differ from all those I 
have hitherto described. Not only is the head small, but 
the small jaws are quite incapable of that mobility which is 
so extraordinary and so characteristic of snakes generally. 
Within their little mouths there are only a very few 
simple teeth, the lower jaws and the palate having none. 
Like the boas, they have rudiments of hinder limbs 
beneath the skin. 

These snakes have the habits of earthworms, whence 
they are often termed "burrowing snakes," and many 
species are very much smaller than any ordinary earth- 
worm. Their body is about the same size throughout, 
being clothed with sDiall smooth scales in harmony with 
their burrowing habits. They have but a rudimentary 
eye. None of them are poisonous ; their food consists of 
grubs, insects, and other small creatures. They are 
found all over the warmer regions of the world, especially 
in Asia and Australia. They are numerous in America, 
but extend to the shores of the Mediterranean and Japan. 



144 



TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



We have now advanced considerably in reply to our 
question: "What is a rattlesnake"? We have seen 
what it is in itself and what is its position in the whole 
order of serpents. We now know that rattlesnakes form 
a portion of that subordinate division of viperine snakes, 
which are known as pit vipers. We know that, poisonous 
as they are, they are not more so than some kinds of the 
great group of mostly harmless snakes, which goes by 
the name of colubrine. We have seen their relation to 
the other sections, and how they differ from the boa-like 
snakes and worm-like snakes. It only now remains to 
consider what a rattlesnake is in so far as it is a snake, 
and what are the relations which it thus bears to other 
reptiles. 

Reptiles are creatures which form a class by them- 
selves, but one which had very special relations with the 
state of this planet at epochs so remote that the imagina- 
tion has no warrant for an attempt to express it even 
in centuries. Of all reptiles, some of the most important 
orders — flying reptiles, marine reptiles — have entirely 
passed away and left no living representative. 

Now, on the principle of evolution, the most important 
and interesting questions are : How snakes came to be ? 
and. What creatures may regarded as their special 
ancestors ? 

Ancient fossils throw but little light on these questions, 
for although the secondary period may be called the age 
of reptiles, snakes are not known with certainty to have 
had any place in it, nor yet any creatures which can be 
affirmed to have been the special predecessors of serpents. 
Nevertheless, in the latter pai-t of the secondary deposits 
(which deposits ended with the chalk) a few relics have 
been found in Eui^ope, and more in America (New Jersey, 
Alabama, and Kansas) of certain four-Hmbed reptiles 



THE RATTLESNAKE I45 

which may have been such predecessors. They were 
gigantic, long-bodied animals, sometimes forty feet long, 
with two pairs of limbs in the form of small paddles, and 
a head somewhat like that of a python. They had jaws 
which could be dilated to a certain extent like those of 
serpents. But, as we have seen, it is not all snakes which 
possess this power, and since these American giants must 
have gained this power independently, it is difficult to see 
why the serpents of later times may not have done like- 
wise. True and undoubted snakes, however, began to 
make their appearsince in the lower tertiary rocks. They 
were mostly large-sized and seem all to have been non- 
venomous, though a fossil viper has been discovered in 
the middle tertiary rocks of the south of Erance. 

Among living reptiles we can hardly expect to find the 
representatives of snake ancestors amid either tortoises 
or crocodiles, but in the very extensive order of lizards 
we might hope to find such, and indeed various kinds 
of lizards do seem to show some special resemblance 
to snakes, although they are probably but superficial 
ones. 

The most obvious distinction between snakes and 
almost all lizards, is that the latter have two pairs of 
limbs, while the former have not one. But among the 
lizards known as seines (whereof one was a favourite 
ingredient in the medicines of former days), the limbs, 
as we go through a long series of forms, become smaller 
and smaller, till they become as minute proportionally as 
are those of the batrachian amphiuma.* Some of these 
lizards have a single pair of limbs, the hinder ones, while 
the body is extremely elongated. Certain Australian 
lizards (Delma) have no fore limbs, while the hind limbs 
are only represented by a minute pair of flattened lobes, 
* See ante, p. 10^. 

K 



146 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

one on either side of the body. Another allied Australian 
lizard has no indication whatever of limbs. The same 
is the case with the amphisbsena, a lizard the best known 
form of which is found throughout South America, where 
it burrows like an earthworm and has all the habits of the 
worm-like snakes. A nearly related kind, however, 
which is found in California and Mexico, though it has 
no hinder limbs, has a very small pair of fore-limbs, 
which, small as they seem, are very well formed, with 
minute toes. It is known as the C heir otes. 

A lizard which in England is considered popularly to 
be a snake, is that known as the blind worm, which is 
spread throughout Europe, northern Asia, and northern 
Africa. Not only is it called a snake, but an adder, and 
sometimes a deaf adder. It is popularly reported as being 
*' deadly poison." In vain have we lectured farm labourers 
and even farmers on the essentially harmless and (as a 
slug and grub eater) beneficent nature of this small 
reptile. None the less have we come again and again on 
its mutilated form, ruthlessly cut in two, with a spade. 

It is really a most gentle and inoffensive animal, 
which, even when roughly handled, rarely attempts to 
bite, while if the attempt be made, its teeth are so small, 
one is none the worse for it. What may help to account 
for the mistaken opinion that it is a kind of viper is 
the fact that, like that animal (but most unlike other 
lizards), it brings forth its young alive. In feeding, when 
it has seized a slug not too large for it, it passes it 
through its jaws till it can get one end of the slug in 
its mouth, when it proceeds to swallow it. Its jaws 
are like those of all lizards, not distendable, so that it 
cannot swallow either frogs or mice. 

Though the belief that it is poisonous is erroneous, 
and though till quite lately aU lizards were suppose^ 



THE RATTLESNAKE 147 

to be non-venomous, it has of late years been found 
out that there may be poisonous lizards. In Central 
America there is a rather large lizard known as Heloderma, 
many of the teeth of which are grooved, and supplied 
from large spittle glands. One of these creatures was 
so ungrateful as to bite the hand of that distinguished 
American naturalist. Dr. Shufeldt. Although he at once 
sucked a considerable amount of blood out of the wound, 
yet he soon felt very severe shooting pains up his arm 
and down the same side of his body. The parts also 
rapidly swelled, and he became so faint that he fell. 
In two days, however, he recovered. Some of the saliva 
of this lizard injected into a pigeon killed it in seven 
minutes j and a rabbit, into the carotid artery of which 
some had been impelled, died in less than two minutes. 
It is said to affect the nervous system, including that of 
the heart. 

But though this lizard resembles some serpents in 
having grooved teeth, nevertheless these teeth and its 
poison glands are situated in the lower jaw, whereas, as in 
all serpents (save one, quite recently discovered), it is 
only the teeth of the upper jaw which are grooved and 
become " poison fangs." 

The structure of this venomous lizard shows us unmis- 
takably that its poison fangs and those of serpents must 
have arisen independently, and poison fangs must have 
had a still more multiple origin, since those of the pit 
vipers and those of the cobras must have also had an 
independent origin, because their structural conditions 
are so diverse and the groups to which these different 
snakes pertain are so distinct. But such being the case, 
it is not impossible that the fangs of poisonous tree- 
snakes and poisonous water-snakes also had an inde- 
pendent origin. 



148 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

This reflection throws an important light on the pos- 
sibilities of origin of the whole order of serpents, since, 
on the principle of evolution, that snakes must have de- 
scended from four-limbed reptiles is not to be questioned. 
It cannot be questioned, because the boa-snakes and 
the w^orm-snakes both bear in their bodies the rudiments 
of a pair of hind limbs, and therefore must be held to 
have descended from four-footed ancestors ; but it does 
not necessarily follow that they all descended from the 
same four-footed ancestors. We have seen even in this 
most brief statement that difierent kinds of Uzards (seines, 
delmas, amphisbsense, and slow-worms) have all acquired 
long snake-like bodies. But these kinds of lizards are 
not so near of kin that we need doubt but that they 
have acquired their snake-like forms independently, and 
separately parted with their limbs by persistent shrinkage. 
If so, why may not different sections of the order of 
snakes also have become elongated in body and limbless 
independently ? Such, at least, we are persuaded, was the 
case with the worm-like snakes, even if the vipers, 
colubrines, and boas may be diverging branches from 
some ancient common stock. Thus we see how snakes 
and lizards reinforce the lesson we have had again and 
again impressed upon us in our successive consideration 
of different types of animal life, beginning with apes 
and opossums. 

The doctrine which the student of evolution has ever 
to hold before his eyes to guide him in his search is the 
doctrine of the possibly independent origin of similar 
structures in very many unexpected cases. 

The rattlesnake, then, is a very specially modified, 
exclusively American, form of pit viper. It is a poisonous 
snake of a special line of descent, and the most highly 
developed type of one primary distinct section of the 



THE RATTLESNAKE 149 

whole order of serpents. It is also a member of an ordei 
of reptiles not yet certainly known to have extended 
back beyond tertiary times, but which is now disseminated 
throughout all the warmer regions of the habitable globe. 
It must have had four-footed ancestors, though it has 
not the smallest relic of a limb to boast of itself. As to 
what those four-footed creatures were like we cannot as 
yet hazard a conjecture. Since perfectly developed 
serpents, and even vipers, existed in tertiary times, it 
seems unlikely that any lizards of our own day can 
represent what were once the predecessors of all ser- 
pents. It is possible that in the before-mentioned 
python-headed reptiles of America, we have cousins 
of the ancestors of snakes, if not the ancestors them- 
selves. But this is still but a speculative hypothesis in 
which we cannot venture to repose anything like 
confidence, impressed as we are with the constantly 
recurring evidence before us that many similarities of 
organisation may co-exist without any true affinity of 
race and descent, accompanying such co-existence. 
The ancestors of the rattlesnake are, therefore, beyond 
our mental vision. All but enthusiastic naturalists 
will probably desire that their progeny may, within a 
moderate period, be beyond our bodily vision also. 



VI 

THE SEROTINE, OE OAEOLIITA BAT 

This little brown bat has been selected as our type of all 
bats because it is the one only animal of the kind found 
in both the Old World and the New. It has, indeed, a 
very wide range, being found in America from Lake 
Winnipeg to Guatemala, while in the^ Old World it ex- 
tends from England to Siberia, Java, and the Oamaroon 
Mountains of Africa. It is common in all the Atlantic 
States, and abounds in Albany during February and 
March, as De Kay tells us in his " Natural History of 
New York." No other kind of bat whatever is found on 
both sides of the Atlantic. 

Such small animals as the bats of temperate regions, 
so very rarely seen by day, and all apparently so much 
alike, may seem to most persons to be objects of little 
interest. 

Nevertheless, bats are exceedingly interesting animals, 
as we think the reader will find to be the case. But 
what is a bat ? 

No one who has ever taken a bat in his hand and has 
noticed its fur, its ears, and its teeth can doubt but that 
it is a little beast. That the ancient Germans as well as 
our English-speaking ancestors saw the truth so far, is 
evident from the names they respectively bestowed on it 
— from the German nsime, Jleder7naus, and the old English 
teTm,Jlittermouse. 



THE CAROLINA BAT 151 

- Nevertheless bats were very often supposed to be birds. 
Such seems to have been the opinion of the Jews, and 
the ^'bird of darkness" is placed in Deut. xiv. 18, among 
the unclean ones forbidden as food : " And the stork and 
the heron after her kind, and the lapwing and the bat." 

Aristotle, though he placed the bats among flying 
animals, and therefore among birds, recognised distinctly 
the difference in their organisation, and the same thing 
may be affirmed of Pliny. But in spite of this, and 
although Albertus Magnus, in the thirteenth century, 
was acquainted fully with the true nature of bats as 
being beasts, as also with their habit of hibernating 
during the cold season, we find that instead of progress 
a retrogression in knowledge took place after the Middle 
Ages. 

Thus, Belon in 1557, in his " Histoire de la Nature 
des Oiseaux," includes bats with his birds. At the same 
time he was not unacquainted with the mode of their 
reproduction, as the following verse proves : 

" La souris chauve est un oiseau de nuict 
Qui point ne pond ; ains ses petits enfante 
Lesquels du laict de ses tetins sustante 
En petit corps grande vertu reluit." 

Again, almost a hundred years later on — in 1645 — " 
Aldrovandus expressed his conviction that bats were 
rather birds than beasts, and this in spite of his careful 
study of them, as proved by his beginning to distinguish 
different species one from another. 

About a quarter of a century afterward, Ray assigned 
them their true place, which they have kept ever since. 

But though the bat is a beast, it is a very peculiar one 
and is essentially an animal of the air. All its structure 
is modified for flight, and it rarely descends to the ground. 



152 



TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



1 



In stud}'ing the turkey we saw how all a bird's struc- 
ture is also modified for flight, but the modifications of 
bats and birds, though directed to the same end, are, as we 
shall see, very different modifications. Indeed, the bat's 
organisation, alone of existing creatures, serves to give 
us a good conception of the wings of those ancient flying 
reptiles, the pterodactyls. Its real affinities well serve to 
show how little mere external aspect can be trusted as a 
guide to fundamental relationships. The bat, as I have 
just said, is essentially an animal formed for aerial! if e above 
Fig. 38. 




THE CAROLINA BAT. 



the surface of the ground. The mole is an animal formed 
for subterranean life beneath it, and the mole as rarely 
ascends to that surface as the bat descends to it, and 
its structure is so efficiently modified for most rapid 
burrowing that it may be said to fly through the earth 
as the bat flies through the air. The bat's hand, as we 
shall see, attains the maximum of length and slender- 
ness, while the mole's is at a minimum of length, but is a 
model of concentrated power. The contrast between any 
animals could hardly be more complete ; yet the bat and 
the mole share no small degree of affinity, and may be 
said to be zoological cousins. 



THE CAROLINA BAT 153 

And now let us take a somewhat close look at our 
chosen typical form, the Serotine, or Carolina bat. It has 
a little rounded body about two and a half inches long, 
covered with a very soft fur, which Shakespeare calls 
" wool " when enumerating the ingredients of Macbeth's 
witches' cauldron. It has a small head with very small 
eyes, but large ears. It has a slender tail, nearly two 
inches long, and two pairs of limbs, extremely different 
both in size and structure. Its legs are of but moderate 
length, but disposed so singularly that the knees are 
bent almost backward, like our elbows. 

Each leg ends in a foot with five toes, which are free 
(not " webbed '' like those of a duck), with five claws of 
about the same size. 

The other pair of limbs, the arms, are elongated both 
above and below the elbow, but the fingers are wonder- 
fully long, and they are joined together to their tips by 
skin, being " webbed " like the toes of a water-fowl. But 
it is not only the fingers which are thus " webbed." A 
large expanse of skin connects them with the sides of 
the body, and with the legs as far as the ankles, and 
does not even stop there, but extends onward to the tail, 
which is thus connected with the two legs. 

The large expanse of skin which unites the fingers 
and extends to the sides of the body and legs is (with 
its component bones, &c.) called " the wing." The 
part between the legs is termed the " interfemoral 
membrane." 

If we look carefully we shall see that though the 
four fingers of each hand are thus bound together 
and support the wing membrane as the " ribs " of an 
umbrella support its web, each thumb is nevertheless 
free. Each thumb indeed stands out at a wide angle 
and is furnished with a very long, strong, and hooked claw. 



154 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

The ear seems at the first glance to be a double 
organ, a very small one appearing inside the larger one. 
This appearance, however, is due merely to the very 
great development of that small prominence (called the 
" tragus ") which in ourselves projects backward, to cover 
externally and so to guard the opening of the ear. 

When treating of the opossum we spoke of fl}'ing 
opossums and flying squirrels, but no one of these crea- 
tures, any more than the flying fish or any existing 
reptile, really " flies." 

The bat, however, flies as truly as the bird does, and 
in the same way — by striking the air with its fore limbs, 
but the mechanism is very difierent.^ When consider- 
ing the turkey we noted how in birds the bones of the 
hand are reduced to a minimum, the fingers being both 
diminished in number and greatly shortened. From the 
brief description of the bat's wing just given we may see 
that in it the very opposite condition obtains. 

A similar condition existed in the pterodactyls, in- 
asmuch as they flew by means of a wing membrane 
sustained by the elongated bones of the hand. Never- 
theless, in those reptiles it was only one finger which 
was thus elongated. Thus here again the similarity of 
their wing with that of the bat must have arisen inde- 
pendently. 

But another independent similarity of structure, one 
which must have arisen at least four times over, may 
be noted with respect to organs which subserve the 
movements of the wings. 

When treating of birds, we noted their almost uni- 
versally " keeled " breast-bone, which, by the fact of its 
being keeled, afibrds sufficient scope for the implantation 
of the powerful muscles which act on the wings. Bats 
also require powerful muscles of the kind, and on that 



THE CAROLINA BAT 155 

account have also developed a keel on their breast-bone. 
The same was the case with the ancient pterodactyls, 
and such is the case with the bat's subterranean 
cousin, the mole, which also requires most powerful 
muscles to move its short limbs as it does. 

The wings being thus true organs of flight, the legs 
and tail together exercise a rudder-like action. 

Any one who has watched the flight of bats must 
have been struck with the extremely rapid turns they 
repeatedly make — movements necessary to enable them 
to seize their insect food. As before said, they rarely 
descend to the ground, but w^hen they do so they can 
crawl upon it, though in so doing they have a singularly 
awkward and shuffhng gait. Their wings are then closed 
(the long fingers turned backward and lying side by side) 
and the animal rests on its wrists and hind feet, the body 
being dragged forward by the help of the strong hooked 
thumb nails, which also help it to climb with ease up 
any rough surface, even though perpendicular. 

When at rest, bats usually hang suspended, head 
downward, by the claws of their feet, though occasion- 
ally they turn round and hang by the claws of their 
thumbs. 

Most nocturnal beasts have large eyes, but almost all 
bats have very small ones. This is perhaps due to the 
fact that bats seem in their flight to be guided by an 
extraordinarily delicate sense of touch, as was long ago 
experimentally demonstrated by Spailanzani. He (not 
having any fear of anti-vivisectionists before his eyes) 
found that bats deprived of the power of sight, and as 
far as possible of smell and hearing also, were still able 
not only to avoid ordinary obtacles to their flight in 
places quite new to them, but even to pass without con- 
tact between threads which had purposely been extended 



156 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

in various directions across the room in which the experi- 
ments were made. This sense is believed to be due to 
an exceedingly delicate power of sensation possessed 
by the membrane of the wing — a power enabling the 
creature to feel by atmospheric pressure and vibration, 
the nearness of adjacent objects. 

Certainly if the wing does possess such sensibility the 
great extent of its surface must intensify it to a high 
degree. Now, the wing is richly supphed with nerves, 
while the power of feeling by means of the nerves depends 
greatly on the amount of blood supplied to them. This we 
all know by the numbness we can bring easily on in any 
one of our fingers by tying a string tightly round its root, 
which causes it, as we say, to "go to sleep," a condition 
occasioned by depriving its nerves of their due supply of 
blood. The circulation of that fluid in man and beasts 
is brought about mainly by the rhythmical contractions 
of the heart, while this is aided by the elasticity of the 
arteries, which, though not themselves contractile, have 
a power, through their elasticity, of propelling the blood 
which is not possessed by the veins. 

Now, it is a very remarkable fact that the veins in the 
bat's wing are positively contractile, thus serving in a 
most exceptional manner to propel the blood, and so, 
indirectly, augment such powers of sensation as the 
delicate membrane of the bat's wing may be supplied 
with. 

There are probably not less than a thousand different 
kinds of bats, for most likely the species already 
collected do not amount to half those which will be 
eventually known to us. No less than four hundred 
kinds were fully described a dozen years ago by Mr. G. 
A. Dobson, a naturaUst who has especially devoted him- 
self to the study of these animals. 



THE CAROLINA BAT 157 

Bats form an order of beasts primarily divided into 
two groups, or sections, very unequal in size. One of 
these comprises bats found in all parts of the world, 
including Europe, Northern Asia, and America. 

The other group contains only the flying foxes and 
their allies, of which not more than about eighty species 
are yet known, none of which are found in America or 
Northern Asia and Europe. 

No bats of any kind are found where neither insects 
nor fruit can be obtained. 

Thus there are none in Iceland nor in Kerguelen's 
Land. They are found in most oceanic islands, even the 
small Savage Island, south-east of the Navigator's group, 
being inhabited by one kind of flying fox. 

None appear, however, to inhabit the islands of the 
Low Archipelago or in the Galapagos group, nor have 
any been found in St. Helena. 

The great primary division to which the Carolina bat 
and all American and European bats belong is made up of 
five subordinate groups, or families, as follows: (i) The 
common bats, (2) the leaf-nosed bats, (3) the Old World 
blood-sucking family, (4) the oblique-snouted family, 
and (5) the New World blood-sucking family.* 

We will notice first the family of common bats, whereof 
more than twelve dozen different species have been already 
described. Though only one of these species, the Caro- 
lina bat, is common to both the Old World and the 
New, yet the family, as a whole, is common to both, 
while it ranges from 32° North latitude down to Terra 
del Fuego. About a dozen species of the family are 
found in England. The commonest of these is the pipis- 

* These five families are known in science respectively by the 
names : (i) Vespertilionidas, (2) Khinolopliidae, (3) Nycteridas, 
(4) Emballonuridse, and (5) Phyllostomidie. 



158 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

trelle, which is also found throughout the whole of the 
northern regions of the Old World, including northern 
Africa. It is the first to make its appearance in England 
in the spring. Bats, like dormice, when winter approaches 
fall into a peculiar state of winter sleep, called hiberna- 
tion. For this purpose they generally assemble together 
in large numbers, in out-of-the-w^ay places, caverns, 
hollow trees, the inside of church towers, or within tho 
roofs of outhouses, hanging head downward by the claws 
of their feet. During this condition the most important 
functions of life — breathing and the circulation of the 
blood — go on very slowly indeed, while the temperature 
of the body becomes notably diminished. From this 
dormant condition the pipistrelle usually rouses itself by 
the middle of March or soon after, and has been known 
even to shake off its slumbers and flit about in the middle 
of a bright, sunny but frosty day just before Christmas. 

Its food consists specially of gnats, and as those animals 
often dance in the sunbeams of a winter's day in England, 
it is easy to understand that this little bat may then go 
after them. But it will eat various other insects, and 
even flesh, and it has been caught in a larder while 
making a hearty meal from a piece of meat to which it 
was clinging. 

In confinement it has also been observed to strike 
down a fly with its wings and then prostrate itself over 
it, stretching out all its membranes to prevent the fly's 
escape, while it thrust down its head between its arms 
and secured it. 

Most bats, save flying foxes, are well fitted for such 
food, as their grinding teeth bristle with sharp points 
most excellently fitted to crack the hard but brittle case 
which encloses an insect's body. 

The flight of the pipistrelle is quick and flitting, and 



THE CAROLINA BAT 159 

it is often to be seen in the neighbourhood of ponds or 
streams in search of its favourite food. Its cry is 
exceedingly shrill, so much so, that some persons are 
quite unable to bear it. 

Homer compares the voices of the ghosts to the cries 
of bats. In the 24th book of the Odyssey, 6, he says : 
" As when bats in a corner of a quiet cave, when one of 
them has fallen from off the cluster — so they (the ghosts ) 
went along screaming." 

As Pope gives it : 

" Trembling the spectres glide, and plaintive vent 
Their hollow screams along the deep descent, 
As in the cavern of some rifled den, 
When flock nocturnal bats, and birds obscene ; 
Clustered they hang, till at some sudden shock 
They move, and murmurs run through all the rock, 
So cowering fled the sable host of ghosts." 

Bats bring forth one or two young ones at a birth. 
They are born naked and blind, and are suckled much 
as is the human infant. 

Years ago, a Mr, Daniell recorded his observations on 
this subject with respect to a female noctule bat, which 
is one of the largest species found in England. She was 
kept in a cage, wherein one day her owner observed that 
she was very restless. 

The uneasiness continued for upward of an hour, the 
animal remaining in her usual attitude, suspended by her 
hind feet. On a sudden she reversed her position, and 
attached herself by her anterior limbs to a cross wire of 
the cage, stretching her hind legs to their utmost extent, 
curving the tail upward and expanding the interfemoral 
membrane so as to form a perfect nest-like cavity for the 
reception of the young. Into this receptacle it was 
born, lying on its back, perfectly destitute of hair, blind, 



i6o 



TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



and larger than a new-born mouse. Its hind legs and 
claws were remarkably strong and serviceable, enabling 
it not only to cling to its mother, but also to the deal 
sides of the cage. The dam held her baby wrapped up 
in the membrane of her wing, shifting it occasionally 
from side to side to suckle it. 

Curious bats, named long- eared bats, are found both 
in England and the United States, though not the same 
species. The American species ranges from Vancouver's 
Island to Alabama and Florida. 



Fig 39 




THE LONG-EARED BAT. 

These bats well deserve their name, for their ears are 
so long that they equal in length the entire trunk. 
They are, therefore, relatively larger than those of any 
other animal. They are capable of being folded up, and 
generally are so folded during sleep. 

Speaking of this little animal, Mr. Bell tells us 
(" British Quadrupeds," p. 54) : 

" It is one of the most common British bats, and the 
extraordinary development of the ears, their beautiful 
transparency, and the elegant curves into which they 
are thrown at the will of the animal, render it by far 
the most pleasing. It is also more readily tamed than 
any other, and may soon be brought to exhibit a consi- 



THE CAROLINA BAT l6l 

derable degree of familiarity with those who feed and 
caress it. I have frequently watched them when in con- 
finement, and have observed them to be bold and familiar 
even from the first. They are very cleanly, not only 
cleaning themselves after feeding, and at other times 
with great assiduity, but occasionally assisting each other 
in this office. They are very playful, too, and their 
gambols are none the less amusing from their awkward- 
ness. They run over and against each other, pretending 
to bite, but never harming their companions of the same 
species, though I have seen them exhibit a sad spirit of 
persecution to an unfortunate barbastelle bat which was 
placed in the same cage with them. They may readily 
be brought to eat from the hand ; and my friend, Mr. 
James Sowerby, had one which, when at liberty in 
the parlour, would fly to the hand of any of the young 
people who held up a fly toward it, and, pitching 
on the hand, take the fly without hesitation. If the 
insect were held between the lips, the bat would 
then settle on its young patron's cheek and take the fly 
with great readiness from the mouth ; and so far was 
this familiarity carried, that when either of my youug 
friends made a humming noise with the mouth in 
imitation of an insect, the bat would search about the 
lips for the promised dainty." 

One of the " young friends " here referred to is now 
the esteemed Secretary of the Royal Botanic Society of 
London, and he has assured us of the truth of this 
anecdote. 

The barbastelle bat is a kind confined to the northern 
regions of the Old World. It is a small bat with swollen 
cheeks and short ears, each containing a tragus more 
than half as long as the ear itself. 

One found asleep in a chalk cavern in England began 
to wake up when brought into a warm room, when it 
fed readily on small bits of meat and drank water. It 
was fond of lying on the hearthrug before the fire, 



^ 



162 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



appearing to luxuriate in the warmth. It was, how- 
ever, a timid animal, not at all disposed to become 
familiar in the way that long-eared bats will so become. 

The leaf-nosed bats (2) form a family confined to the 
temperate and tropical parts of the Old "World, from Old 
Ireland to New Ireland. In temperate regions they 
hibernate in dry and warm hiding-places during the 
winter, not venturing abroad in the cold. In tropical 
and sub-tropical countries they frequent hill regions, 
and many kinds are clothed with very long and dense 
fur. More than fifty species have been described. 

These bats are very remarkable for the extraordinary 
folds and processes of skin which surround and decorate 
their noses, which appear to be excessively deHcate 
organs of touch, no doubt capable of appreciating the 
proximity of objects through atmospheric pressure in an 
extremely high degree. This would appear to be the 
case both on account of the large nerves with which 
these organs are supplied, and also from the fact that 
when leaf -nosed bats are observed flying with common 
bats in an enclosed space they much excel the latter in 
dexterity. 

The nose-leaf consists of three parts ; (i) A more or 
less horseshoe-shaped fold of skin which invests the sides 
and front of the muzzle and includes the nostrils within 
its inner margin: (2) A central ridge-like process 
between and behind the nostrils; and (3) a membrane 
behind this, that either stands up vertically or extends 
backwards between the ears, which diflfer from those of 
the common bats, in that no sort of second ear — the 
tragus — stands up within them. 

These bats come out later at night than the common 
bats, and they have especially pointed teeth to crush the 
dense cases of beetles on which they feed largely. 



THE CAROLINA BAT 



163 



When they are plentiful, some species of this family 
live for a great part of the year in troops counting 
several hundreds each and inhabiting great caverns. 

After the pairing season, the females separate from 
the males and carry on their maternal duties in per- 
manent "mothers' meetings." The males carry on a 
club life by themselves till their spouses have sent off the 
little ones, who can soon take care of themselves. 
Thereupon society life is again resumed. This cannot be 
said to be a universal custom, however, for one of the 
Fig. 40. 




THE MEGADERMA LYRA. 



largest Indian species seems usually to dwell in pairs. This 
kind is also remarkable for being less nocturnal than most 
of its congeners, as it commences its flight early in the 
evening, and generally careers about not more than thirty 
feet above the ground. It seems, indeed, that it is the 
smaller species of insect-feeding bats which fly high, 
seeking small insects there to be found, while the lararer 
kinds hawk about below, after the large beetles and other 
large insects which the smaller bats could not manage. 

When these leaf-nosed bats are disturbed, the curious 
membranes on their noses are kept in constant motion, 



i64 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

while the head is turned about in all directions as if 
thus to discover the cause of the disturbance. 

The third family of bats I have distinguished as Old 
World blood-suckers, but do not by this mean to imply 
that the dozen species it contains all have the habit of 
sucking blood, but only that one typical form called 
Megaderma (Fig. 40) has it. 

That well-known Indian observer, the late Mr. Blyth, 
actually captured a specimen in the act of sucking the 
blood, while flying, from a smaller bat which it afterward 
devoured. His statement is as follows (" Journal of the 
Asiatic Society of Bengal," vol. xi.) : 

" Chancing one evening to observe a rather large bat 
enter an outhouse, from which there was no other egress 
than by the doorway, I was fortunate in being able to 
procure a light, and thus proceed to the capture of the 
animal. Upon finding itself pursued it took three or 
four turns round the apartment, when down dropped 
what at the moment I supposed to be its young, which 
I deposited in my handkerchief. After a somewhat 
tedious chase, I then secured the object of my pursuit, 
which proved to be a fine female Megaderma. I then 
looked to the other bat which I had picked up, and to 
my considerable surprise found it to be a small kind of 
pipistrelle, which is exceedingly abundant throughout 
India. The individual now referred to was feeble from 
loss of blood, which it was evident the Megaderma had 
been sucking from a large and still bleeding wound 
under and behind the ear; and the very obviously 
suctional form of the mouth of the Megaderma was itself 
sufficient to hint the strong probability of such being the 
case. During the very short time that elapsed before I 
entered the outhouse it did not appear that the depre- 
dator had once alighted ; and I am satisfied that it 
sucked the vital fluid from its victim as it flew, having 
probably seized it on the wing, and that it was seeking a 
quiet nook, where it might devour the body at leisure. 
I kept both animals separate till next morning, when, 



THE CAROLINA BAT 165 

procuring a convenient cage, I first put in the Mega- 
derma, and after observing it for some time, I placed the 
pipistrelle with it. No sooner was the latter perceived 
than the other fastened upon it with the ferocity of a 
tiger, again seizing it behind the ear, and made several 
efforts to fly off with it ; but finding it must needs stay 
within the precincts of the cage, it soon hung by the hind 
legs to one side of its prison, and after sucking its victim 
till no more blood was left, commenced devouring it, 
and soon left nothing but the head and some portions of 
the limbs." 

The members of this small family are confined ex- 
clusively to the warmer parts of Africa and Asia, from 
Egypt to Celebes. They have a very conspicuous nose- 
leaf and large ears, medially united to each other above 
the head, and each with a large tragus within. 

The oblique-snouted family of bats is very large, 
sixty-three species having been already described a dozen 
years ago. It has representatives in both hemispheres. 

Seven genera (with thirteen species) are peculiar to 
America, five are peculiar to the New World, while two 
are common to both. 

These bats have no nose-leaves, and the faces of some 
of them remind us of pug dogs. The tail projects freely 
beyond the short interfemoral membrane. Many of 
them have narrow wings, and some are very naked. 

The most curious form {Gheiromeles) from the Malay 
region, has a very thick skin, almost naked, while its 
great toe is very large and separated from the others. 
A curious fold of skin on the breast and sides of the body 
serves as a cradle for the baby. Such nursing pouches are 
probably absolutely necessary for the preservation of the 
young, which otherwise could scarcely maintain their hold 
on the naked body of the mother during flight. 

It is interesting to find these pouches developed in 



i66 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

both the male and the female, for their presence in the 
former suggests the idea that, where the young are born 
together, the male may relieve the female of one of 
them. 

The fifth and last family of the larger primary section 
of the order of bats is that which I have distinguished 
as the New "World blood-suckers. It indeed is confined 
exclusively to South and Central America, save one 
species, which is said to extend up to Bermuda and South 
Carolina. 

There are from sixty to seventy species, among which 
the renowned vampires are included. All of them 
possess nose loaves, but, unlike the Old World nose- 
leaf bats, they also have a well-developed tragus 
within the ears, and also rather large eyes. It appears 
that only one or two of the family are really blood- 
suckers, and those kinds which in science are specially 
distinguished as vampires appear to be iusect-eating 
bats. 

All sorts of exaggerated accounts were given, although 
some old observations which some discredited are now 
found to have been justified. D'Azara afiirmed that 
they would sometimes bite the wattles and crests of 
fowls while asleep, and suck their blood. The fowls, 
he said, generally die of this, as gangrene is engendered 
by the wounds. He adds : 

*'They bite also horses, mules, asses, and horned cattle, 
usually on the shoulders, buttocks, or neck, as they are 
better enabled to arrive at those parts from the facilities 
afforded them by the mane and tail, Nor is man himself 
secure from their attacks. On this point I am able to 
give a very faithful testimony, since I have had the ends 
of my toes bitten by them four times while I was sleeping 
in the cottages in the open countiy. The wounds which 



THE CAROLINA BAT 



167 



they inflicted, without my feeling them at the time, were 
circular, or rather elliptical." 

The late Mr. Darwin was fortunate enough to be able 
not only conclusively to prove the truth of this blood- 
sucking habit, but also to capture an individual in the 
act, and to make sure exactly what species it was. It is 
that knowr> as ''Desmodus," a form which ranges from 
Mexico to Chili. 

Fig. 41. 




THE VAMPIRE (Desmodus) 

Speaking of horses, Mr. Darwin tells us (" Voyage of 
H.M.S. Beagle," vol. i. p. 22) that this animal 

" is often the cause of much trouble by biting horses on 
their withers. The injury is generally not so much owing 
to the loss of blood as the inflammation which the pres- 
sure of the saddle afterwards produces. The whole circum- 
stance has lately been doubted in England ; I was there- 
fore fortunate in being present when one was actually 
caught on a horse's back. We were bivouacking late one 
evening near Coquimbo, in Chili, when my servant, 
noticing that one of the horses was very restive, went 
to see what was the matter, and fancying he could 
distinguish something, suddenly put his hand on the 



1 68 TYPES OF ANiMAL LIFE 

beast's withers and secured the bat. In the morning the 
spot where the bite had been inflicted was easily dis- 
tinguished from being slightly swollen and bloody. The 
third day afterward we rode the horse, without any ill 
effects." 

The structure of this bat is wonderfully modified in 
harmony with its habits. The special modifications are 
of two kinds — first, the form of the teeth ; and secondly, 
that of the stomach. 

We have already called attention to the fact that the 
back teeth of most bats bristle with sharp points. They 
are also proportionately of good size, while the front or 
cutting teeth are very small indeed. In this bat, how- 
ever, the back teeth are reduced to a minimum both in 
size and number, being quite rudimentary ; at the same 
time, the two middle cutting teeth of the upper jaw are 
of good size and provided with sharp cutting edges, like 
lancets. 

They are thus admirably fitted to make the small 
puncture which the animal requires to make in order 
that it may obtain its needful nourishment. 

The stomach presents us with a structure quite unique 
in the animal kingdom. The stomachs of most bats 
ycb noticed are more or less rounded structures, not 
extending far either right or left from the spot where 
the gullet enters it. It is the part on the left of the 
gullet's entrance which is the more digestive portion, 
and in some animals it is very much enlarged and 
subdivided. 

The part on the right of the gullet is large in such 
creatures as sheep and oxen, and it receives the fresh- 
cropped herbage before digestion begins. In this curious 
bat the left or more digestive part of the stomach is 
reduced to a mere rudiment — the highly nutritious food 



THE CAROLINA BAT 169 

(blood) requiring very little digestion. A capacious 
cavity is, however, needed for its reception, and accord- 
ingly the part of the stomach on the right of the gullet 
is not dilated into a mere capacious sack, as in the Siheep, 
but is drawn out into an enormously long and wide tube? 
capable of containing a large quantity of fluid. So greedy, 
however, is this bat that it will continue to suck blood 
after its capacious intestines are entirely tilled with it, 
the blood first drawn escaping from the latter while 
fresh blood is being sucked in by the mouth. 

It is now time to notice the other great primary section 
of the order of bats — namely, the flying foxes. 

Of these, as before said, about eighty species are known, 
none of them being American. They range from Asia 
Minor and Egypt through Africa and Asia to Australia, 
the Fiji, and Duke of York's and Navigator's Islands, 
and New Ireland. None are found in Tasmania or New 
Zealand. Among these are found the largest of all bats. 
The body may be a foot long and the outstretched wings 
measure five feet across. They are also the most brightly 
coloured and the most varied in tint. Only in one species 
is there a long tail ; in all the others it is short, or may 
be entirely absent. The first finger of the wing generally 
bears a claw. These bats feed on fruit and not on insects, 
and therefore their teeth, instead of bristling with sharp 
points, are smooth, save that they each, bear a longitudinal 
furrow. 

The stomach is not rounded, as in most bats, but 
elongated. Its elongation, however, is just the opposite 
of that of the blood-sucking desmodus, and it is the 
left or digestive portion of the organ which is 
elongated. 

The largest of these bats is that known as the kalong. 
It inhabits the Indian Archipelago, extending from 



170 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

the Andaman and Nicobar Islands to the Philippines 

and Timor. 

Fig 42. 




THE KALONG. 



In the lower parts of Java it is very common, and 
lives in troops, which do not appear to visit the more 
elevated districts. 



THE CAROLINA BAT 171 

Numerous individuals select a tange tree for their 
resort, and, suspending themselves by the claws of their 
hind Hmbs to the naked branches, often in companies of 
several hundreds, afford to a stranger a very singular 
spectacle. A species of fig-tree, often found near the 
villages of the natives, affords them a favourable retreat, 
and the branches are sometimes covered with them. 
They pass the greater part of the day in sleep, hanging 
motionless, ranged in succession, with the head down- 
ward, the wing membrane contracted about the body, and 
often in close contact ; looking Uke fruit of uncommon size 
suspended from its branches. In general these societies 
preserve a perfect silence during the day, but if they are 
disturbed, or if a contention arises among them, they 
emit sharp piercing shrieks, and their awkward attempts 
to extricate themselves when oppressed by the light of 
the sun exhibit a ludicrous spectacle. Soon after 
sunset they gradually quit their hold, and pursue their 
nocturnal flight in quest of food. They direct their 
course by an unerring instinct to the forests, villages, 
and plantations, occasioning incalculable mischief, attack- 
ing and devouring indiscriminately every kind of fruit, 
from the abundant and useful wood-nut, which surrounds 
the dwellings of the meanest peasantry, to the rare 
and most delicate productions which are cultivated 
with care by princes and chiefs. By the latter, as well 
as by the European colonists, various methods are em- 
ployed to protect the orchards and gardens. Without 
such precaution but little valuable fruit would escape the 
ravages of the kalong. They may be observed as soon as 
the light of the sun is gone. Then the bats may be seen 
to follow each other at small but irregular distances, and 
this succession continues till darkness obstructs the view. 
The flight of the kalong is slow and steady, pursued in 



172 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

straight line, and capable of long continuance. The 
hunting of these bats forms occasionally an amusement 
during the moonlight nights. Each is watched till it 
descends on a fruit tree, and then a discharge of small 
shot will bring it to the ground. Foiir or five specimens 
may thus be obtained in an hour. 

Most of the flying foxes inhabit trees, but some also 
are found in caverns with various other species of bats. 

Mr. Pryor (a corresponding member of the Zoological 
Society of London) had a curious experience respecting 
bats in caves when he explored the caverns of North 
Borneo, which are inhabited by the swift, which make 
the edible nest so much prized by jbhe Chinese. He 
tells in "Proceedings of the Zoological Society," 1884, 
P- 534 : 

'' After a rest I ascended the cliff about 400 feet. The 
ascent is quite perpendicular. In many places ladders 
are erected, and in others the water-worn surface of the 
limestone gives a foothold. On the ascent I noticed 
many orchids, begonias, ferns, and mosses I had not 
seen elsewhere. My collector caught a snake I believe 
to be an ElapJiis, certainly the most beautiful Colubrine 
I have seen, white and light grey. The Malays said it 
was very destructive to the swifts, and also that it was 
poisonous ; to convince them it was not, I allowed it to 
bite me. At this poinfc I found myself at the mouth of 
a cave named Simud Putih — i.e., the White Cave. The 
entrance is about 40 feet high by 60 feet wide, and 
descends very steeply, widening out to a great size, and 
having a perpendicular unexplored abyss at its furthest 
point. This cave is used by the nest-gatherers as their 
dwolling-place, and at the entrance are their platforms of 
sticks, one of which was placed at my disposal by the 
head man ; it is also the cave by which the great body of 
the swifts enter. Immediately outside it is a great cir- 
cular opening leading sheer down into Simud Itam ; this is 
one of the two openings mentioned as giving light to that 



THE CAROLINA BAT 173 

cave, and is the entrance most in use by the bats. As 
soon as I had unpacked and settled down on my platform 
I sallied out to find the material from which the birds 
make their nests, as my previous experience is that birds 
do not as a rule travel far for the bulk of the material 
they use. I was speedily successful in my search. It 
is a fungoid growth which incrusts the rock in damp 
places, and w^hen fresh resembles half-melted gum traga- 
canth ; outside it is brown but inside white, and little if 
any change in its consistency is effected by the bird ; the 
inside of the nest is, however, formed by threads of the 
same substance which are drawn out of the mouth in a 
similar way to that of a caterpillar weaving its cocoon. 

"The Malays told me to be sure and return to Simud 
Putih at five o'clock, as I should then see the most won- 
derful sight in all Borneo — the departure of the bats and 
the return to roost of the swifts. I accordingly took a 
seat on a block of lime3tone at the mouth of the cave ; 
the surface of the coral of which it is composed is quite 
fresh-looking, notwithstanding that it must have been 
many ages in its present position, several hundred feet 
above sea level. Soon I heard a rushing sound, and, 
peering over the edge of the circular opening leading into 
Simud Itam, I saw columns of bats wheeling round the 
sides in regular order. Shortly after five o'clock, although 
the sun had not yet set, the columns began to rise above 
the edge, still in a circular flight ; they then rose, wheel- 
ing round a high tree growing on the opposite side, and 
every few minutes a large flight would break off, and, 
after rising high in the air, disappear in the distance ; 
each flight contained many thousands. I counted nine- 
teen flocks go off in this way, and they continued to go 
off in a continual stream until it was too dark for me to 
see them any longer. Among them were three albinos, 
called by the Malays, the Kajah, his son and wife. 

At a quarter to six the swifts began to come into Simud 
Putih. A few had been flying in and out all day long, 
but now they began to pour in, at first in tens and then 
in hundreds, until the sound of their wings was like a 
strong gale of wind whistling through the rigging of a 
ship. They continued flying in until after midnight, as 



174 



TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



1 



I could still see them flashing by over my head when I 
went to sleep. As long as it remained light I found it 
impossible to catch any with my butterfly net, but after 
dark it was only necessary to wave the net in the air to 
secure as many as I wanted. Nevertheless, they must 
undoubtedly possess wonderful powers of sight to fly 
about in the dark in the deepest recesses of their caves 
and to return to their nests, often built in places where 
no light ever penetrates. 

Shortly before sundown a pair of kites made their 
appearance, and, taking their station over the bat chasm, 
would every iiow and then sweep down into the thick of 
the bats, generally securing a victim every time. I shot 
both these marauders, which proved to be Haliastur 
indus, a very beautiful but common bird. There were 
also several specimens of a hawk, wdrkiog away on the 
bats in a very business-like manner, and woe betide the 
unfortunate bat singled out from its flock and put in 
chase ! The way these hawks took the bats one after 
the other was astonishing, and strongly reminded me of 
a man eating oysters. I shot several of these hawks, but 
only secured one, the others being lost over the side of 
the cliff. It proved to be the rare JIachirhamphus 
alcinus, remarkable for the size of its gape and its small 
beak, both of which very much resemble those of the 
swifts. Its habits in taking its prey are also similar, the 
swift catching and swallowing its food while on the wing 
in the same way as this hawk does. 

Arising before daylight, I witnessed a reversal of the 
proceedings of the previous night, the swifts now going 
out of Simud Putih and the bats going into Simud Itam. 
The latter hterally "rained" into their chasm for two 
hours after dayhght. On looking up, the air seemed 
filled wdth small specks, which flashed down perpendicu- 
larly with great rapidity and disappeared in the dark- 
ness below I secured many specimens of the bat, 

and found them to be all of one species. The wings are 
very long and narrow, and it is a very swift flyer. I 
noticed a few specimens of a swallow and also some very 
large bats at the mouth of the cave. These large bats 
were, of course, some kind of flying foxes. 



THE CAROLINA BAT 



175 



We have now noticed the main groups of bats whicli 
inhabit the world in our day; but we know Httle 
indeed of bats which inhabited it in earUer epochs. The 



Fig. 43. 




THE COLUGO. 



oldest known remains are but fossils found in tertiary 
deposits, and they offer us no startling revelation. 

Some form of existing beasts which are now distinct 
enough (such as the ox, the pig, and the horse) were pre- 
ceded in early tertiary times by others which were more 



176 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

or less intermediate in structure. This is not the case as 
regards bats. Bats, as soon as they appear at all, appear 
as thoroughly and as perfectly organised as are those bats 
living among us now. And living bats are separated 
from all other beasts in a very marked manner. They 
constitute an order by themselves, and this fact, together 
with the various others we have been able to set down, 
may enable the reader to answer the question, " What 
is a bat ? " in a reasonable manner. 

But the questions, How bats came to be ? What was the 
origin of the bat ? we are by no means able to answer. 
We cannot say what creatures may have been the bat's 
genetic predecessors, or at what epoch the bat first 
appeared, save that it was before the deposition of the 
tertiary rocks. 

There is one animal, found in Singapore and Borneo, 
which has been supposed to show some affinity to bats. 
This is the colugo, or, as it is sometimes called, the flying 
lemur (Fig. 43). 

It has its fingers webbed, while a membrane extends 
on either side between the arms and the legs, and from 
the legs to the tail. So far it is like a bat, but its fingers 
are not elongated and its toes are webbed, while those 
of the bat are not. Moreover, though it takes long 
jumps through the air and may be able somewhat to 
guide its flight, it certainly does not truly fly. We can- 
not therefore regard this animal as exhibiting any indica- 
tion of the source of the bat tribe. 

We must, it seems, wait for more light from the 
stores of yet undiscovered fossils which the earth 
contains. 



VII 
THE AMERICAN 6180:^" 



The American bison, universally known in the United 
States as the buffalo, is one of the grandest of all the 
creatures which '' divide the hoof and chew the cud." It 
has a large head, with shortish, rounded horns, and there 



Fig. 44. 



';n 



is^>-^- 




THE AMERICAN BISON. 



is a sort of hump over the shoulders, due to the height 
of the withers, which (as in a specimen in the Museum at 
Washington) may be five feet eight inches high. The 
hind-quarters, however, are low and comparatively weak. 
The body, generally, is covered with short, more or less 



178 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

dark-brown woolly fur. Long, darker hair on the head 
hides the eyes, ears, and bases of the horns, while a 
shaggy coat or mane clothes the neck, withers, shoulders, 
and thence downward to the knees. There is a long 
beard beneath the chin, and the tail is tufted at its end. 
The length of the head and body to the root of the tail 
may exceed ten feet by two or three inches. 

The buffalo should be a very interesting animal to all 
American citizens on account of the great danger which 
exists of its becoming utterly extinct. Only thirty-one 
years ago they still numbered several millions, more than 
five millions at the least, whereas in 1889 there were but 
some twenty individuals in Texas, a few in Colorado, Wyo- 
ming, Montana, and Dakota, and two hundred preserved 
by the Government in the Yellowstone ll^ational Park. We 
have, however, recently been assured that some private 
individual citizens in the United States are trying to 
preserve and propagate the buffalo. Canada, which now 
exhibits such interesting examples of political and social 
*' survival," has been practically conservative as regards 
the bison, since it appears that some 500 individuals of a 
race known as the wood bison still survive there. We 
trust that all lovers of Nature wdll have cause to be 
grateful to the Fiftieth Congress, which at its last ses- 
sion voted $200,000 for the establishment of a National 
Zoological Park on a grand scale in the District of 
Columbia, with the intention that American quadrupeds 
now threatened with extermination should enjoy a 
luxurious captivity, when it is hoped they may breed. 
If this project be duly carried out, we may be confident 
that the bison will breed there, since it has been known 
to breed in captivity as long ago as 1786. 

Strange to say, this animal seems to have been first 
seen by Europeans, not in a wild state, but preserved in 



THE AMERICAN BISON 179 

a menagerie. It was thus seen by Cortez in 152 1, when 
he reached Anahuac, where the Mexican king, Monte- 
zuma, maintained a collection of wild animals, among 
them a bison, which must have been brought a distance 
of 400 miles at the least. It was first met with wild, in 
1530, by Alvar Nunez Cabeza, in south-eastern Texas, 
while an Enghsh traveller, Samuel Argoll, saw it some- 
where near Washington in 161 2. Atone time it existed 
in enormous quantities, the prairies being absolutely 
black with them as far as the eye could reach. Col. 
Dodge tells us in his " Plains of the Great West " that, 
even so late as May 187 1, he drove thirty-four miles in 
a light waggon from old Fort Zara to Fort Earned on the 
Arkansas. For at least twenty-five miles of this distance 
he passed through one immense herd, composed of count- 
less smaller herds of buffalo then on their journey north. 
The whole country appeared one great mass of buffalo, 
moving slowly to the northward ; it was only when 
actually among them that it could be ascertained that 
the apparently solid mass was an agglomeration of innu- 
merable small herds of from 50 to 200 animals. Its range 
once extended over about a third of the whole of North 
America. In some places, as in Georgia, it almost 
reached the Atlantic coast, extending thence westward 
through the Alleghany Mountains and forests to the 
prairies of the Mississippi — always its special home — and 
southward to north-eastern Mexico; also across the 
Rocky Mountains to New Mexico and Utah, and north- 
ward to the Great Slave Lake. Headers who may be 
interested to know further details about the bison and its 
approach to extermination are referred to J. A.. Allen's 
admirable monograph, " The American Bison, Living and 
Extinct;" and to Yfilliam T. Hornaday's work, "The 
Extermination of the American Bison," published at 



i8o TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

Washington under the auspices of the Smithsonian 
Institution. 

In consequence of the settlement of the country by 
Europeans the area inhabited by the bison was gra- 
dually contracted until, about 1840, one mighty herd 
occupied the centre of its former range. The completion 
of the Union Pacific Railway in 1869 divided this great 
herd into a southern and northern division, the former 
comprising a number of individuals estimated at nearly 
four millions, while the other contained about a million 
and a half. Before 1880 the southern herd had practi- 
cally ceased to exist, while the same fate threatened the 
northern one in 1883, till in 1889 the species became 
reduced to the numbers before given for that year. 

But to know all about the form and structure, the 
habits and distribution of this animal, will go a very 
little way towards enabling us to answer a very impor- 
tant question, with asking which we might very well 
have begun this article — the question, " What is the 
animal which Americans know as the buffalo ? " To 
answer this we must learn something of its relations to 
all other animals, beginning, of course, with those which 
are most like it and may be supposed to be very closely 
akin to it. An extinct bison from the pleistocene rocks of 
Texas, has been distinguished as the " broad-fronted 
bison." There is, however, one species still living — the 
auroch. It is not only confined to the Old World, but 
is now nowhere to be met wdth except in the primeval 
forests of Lithuania, Moldavia, Wallachia, and the Cau- 
casus, where it is artificially preserved. Formerly it 
doubtless ranged over a large portion of Europe. It is 
very like the American kind, but is slightly larger, with 
more powerful hind-quarters ; the fore part of the body, 
however, is not so massive, nor is the mane so luxuriant. 



THE AMERICAN BISON 



i8i 



The European aurochs and the American bison thus form 
a pair of species which are separated off from all other 
animals by certain details of their structure. Their nearest 
ally appears to be the Asiatic animal known as the yak, 
a beast which in a wild state inhabits Chinese Thibet. 
The yak differs from the bison in not having a mane, but 
it has something the appearance of a mediaeval knight's 
caparisoned horse with flowing drapery on either side. 
This is represented in the yak by a fringe of long hair 



Fig. 45. 




THE YAK. 



hanging down from the shoulders, flanks, and thighs 
nearly to the ground, while the tail bears a wonderful 
mass of long, silky hair. Tame yaks are used as beasts 
of burden, and they are very serviceable for travers- 
ing the high, desolate regions of Thibet, and would 
be much more so but for their requiring grass as food 
and refusing corn. They are often crossed with domestic 
cattle, and the white tails of such half-bred animals 
are much valued in India, where they are known as 
*' chowries," and used as fans to drive away flies and 
other insects. 



I82 



TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



The true buffaloes come very near the bison in form 
and structure, but they have more or less flattened horns, 
which incline upward and backward, the tips curving 
inward. The Indian buffalo has been domesticated in 
Egypt and southern Europe. The wild animal is a huge 
beast with enormous horns, and frequents swampy, moist 
districts. There are two African species, and a small 
kind, known as the anoa, is found in Celebes. Three 



Fig. 46. 




THE CAPE BUFFALO. 



other kinds of large, ruminating animals lead from the 
bisons and buffaloes to the true oxen. These are the 
gaur, the gayal, and the banteng. The gaur is the 
largest, being fully six feet high at the withers. It is 
found in all the large Indian forests south of the Hima- 
layas, and is known to sportsmen as the Indian bison. 
It is very shy, and has never been domesticated. The 
gayal has not yet been found wild, though semi-domesti- 
cated individuals are to be met with here and there. Its 
light-coloured legs, which look as if the animal had on 
white stockings, give the creature a very singular appear- 



THE AMERICAN BISON 



183 



ance. The banteng is smaller than either the gaur or the 
gayal, and is found in Burmah, Java, Bali, and Lombok. 
The true oxen are represented by two species. One of 
these consists of those handsome beasts, the humped 
cattle of India. The other includes the domestic oxen 
of Europe and America, together with the herds of wild 
cattle which are still preserved at Chillingham and some 
other British parks. Wild oxen were abundant in 
Fig. 47. 




THE MUSK OX. 



European forests in the days of Julius Csfi!=ar, who gave 
them the name of the urus, and described them as 
equalling the auroch in size. 

All the species yet noticed may be spoken of as bovine 
animals or "oxen," in the widest sense of the term. 
Between them and the goats and sheep, or caprine 
creatures, stands an intermediate form known as the 
musk ox. This is of about the size of a small Welsh or 
Scotch ex, and covered with thick, brown, matted, and 
curly hair. It goes in herds of from twenty to eighty 
and a hundred individuals, among which only two or 



i84 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

three full-grown males are to be found. When frightened 
they collect together as a flock of sheep will do, and 
similarly follow the leader of the herd. In Pleistocene 
times this animal ranged over northern Siberia, Germany, 
France, and England, but in the present day it is con- 
fined to the more norther q parts of North America and 
the shores of the Arctic Sea. It exteods through the 
Parry Islands and Grinnell Land to East Greenland, 
and is found in Sabine Island. Sir J. Hichardson tells 
us that when the animal " is fat, its flesh is well tasted 
and resembles that of the caribou, but has a coarser 
grain. The flesh of the bulls is highly flavoured, and 
both bulls and cows, when lean, smell strongly of musk, 
their flesh at the same time being very dark and tough." 
But the observations of Major Eeilden show that the 
flavour of its flesh varies much from some unknown 
cause, independently of age, sex, or the season of the 
year. 

The group of goats and sheep is a numerous one. 
Among the former (which includes some dozen species), 
may be mentioned the ibex, the markhoor, and the thar 
All the goats are mainly confined to southern Europe 
and northern and central Asia. There are about twelve 
kinds of sheep, whereof the big-horn, or mountain sheep, 
is the only kind which is naturally an inhabitant of the 
New "World, where it was never domesticated. Wild 
sheep are all but exclusively confined to central Asia, 
but the aoudad inhabits the mountains of northern 
Africa, and the moufl9on, Corsica and Sardinia. The 
bharal is found in the Himalayas and the argali in Mon- 
golia. Sheep are naturally dwellers in mountainous 
regions, and none voluntarily take to forests, swamps, or 
level plains. A fossil sheep resembling the argali has 
been found in England, otherwise the sheep is not 



THE AMERICAN BISON 



185 



supposed to have been naturally an inhabitant of the 
British Isles. 

A number of other forms must here, for convenience' 
sake, be grouped together as antelopes. Like all the 
kinds yet noticed they have hollow horns supported on 
bony cores, and neither the horns nor the cores are ever 
shed. They are mostly Old World forms, while none are 
met with in South or Central America. Among the 

Fia 48. 



[^ 





THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN GOAT. 



few American species is that known as the " Rocky 
Mountain goat," which inhabits the northern part of 
California, while the chamois is an inhabitant of Europe 
from the Pyrenees to the Caucasus, ascending to the limit 
of perpetual snow. A multitude of species come from 
southern Africa, such as the hartebeest, the blessbok, the 
bontebok, the springbok, the curious gnu with its ox- 
like head and delicate feet, the duilkerbok, Salt's antelope, 
the royal antelope, the rehbok^ the waterbok, the singsing, 



1 86 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

the reitbok, the palla, the sable antelope, the blaubok, 
Baker's antelope, the gemsbok, the leucoryx, the beautiful 
harnessed antelope, the kudu, and the eland. Among 
Asiatic forms may be mentioned the curious and very 
exceptional four-horned antelope of India, the black buck 
of Bengal and Malabar, the saiga of the steppes of central 
Asia, the chiru of Turkestan, more than twenty species 



Fig. 49. 




THE HARNESSED ANTELOPE. 



of gazelles, and the elegant, short-horned nilghai. Banging 
from eastern Africa to western Asia the addax and the 
oryx are to be found. 

All the animals yet noticed have horns which are un- 
branched, and when once developed are not shed. North 
America, however, possesses a very strange form known 
as the prong-horned antelope, which is exceptional in two 
respects: (i) Each of its horns gives off a branch ex- 
tending forward, although the bony core is unbranched. 



THE AMERICAN BISON 187 

(2) At intervals each horn is cast, after which a new one 
is formed on the bony cores beneath it. This species 
terminates our list of creatures with horns formed on 
essentially the same type as those of the animal known 
in the United States as the buffiilo. Thus the American 
bison is a very exceptional hollow-horned ruminant ; 

Fig. 50. 




THE PRONG-HORNED ANTELOPE. 

in other words, it is a member of a great group — a family 
— which contains, together with the oxen, all the sheep, 
goats, and antelopes. 

Another great group of allied animals consists of the 
deer, whereof the magnificent North American deer, the 
wapiti, may be taken as a type. None of the deer have 
outgrowths of true horny matter deposited on a bony 
support. Instead of that they have antlers — that is, 



TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



^ 



outgrowtlis of bone from the head which, while they are 
growing, are covered with soft, sensitive skin, richly- 
supplied with blood. When once completely formed the 
supply of blood ceases, and the skin, becoming dry, wears 
off, leaving the bone of the antler naked and bare. After 
Fig. 




THE WAPITI. 



a time the antler becomes detached near its base and falls 
off, the part left, or pedicle, serving to develop the antler 
which next succeeds. Antlers may be simple and straight, 
but they mostly send off branches or snags, as is well 
seen in the magnificent antlers of the wapiti. There are 
no antlers in two species, while in the reindeer they are 
present on both sexes. In all other deer only the males 



THE AMERICAN BISON 



189 



possess them. The two forms devoid of antlers are the 
Chinese water deer and the musk deer, the latter being 
an inhabitant of central and eastern Asia, where it 
dwells in high elevations. Among the other deer may 
be mentioned the muntjacs of south-eastern Asia, with 
very short antlers borne on long pedicles, the Sambur 
deer, hog deer, swamp deer, the axis, the fallow deer, 
the Cashmir deer, and the sika, all from Asia ; the red 

Fig. 52. 








THE MUSK DEEP, 




deer of Europe, western Asia, and northern Africa, 
the roebuck of Europe and western Asia, the moose and 
caribou of the extreme north of the Old and New Worlds, 
the wapiti, the Virginian, Mexican, and mule (or large- 
eared) deer of North America, and a few South American 
forms known as brockets. With these two great groups 
(i) the hollow-horned and (2) the antler-bearing animals, 
are to be classed three small and exceptional groups, only 
one of which has horns of any kind. The first of these 



T90 



TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



1' 



three groups consists only of the giraffe, a creature now 
confined to the Ethiopian region of the earth's surface, 
though in Pliocene times it existed in Greece, Persia, 
India, and China. It has a pair of short, bony processes 
on the head, coated with hairy skin, and something like 
Fig. 53. 




THE CHEVROTAIN. 



the pedicles of deer, and there is also a median bony 
protrusion between the eyes, like a low, blunt, third 
kind of horn. Another of the three exceptional groups 
above mentioned is that composed of the chevrotains, 
which are the smallest of all rummating animals. Three 
species of these come from the Malay Peninsula, another 
from Ceylon, while a fifth and larger kind is found on 



THE AMERICAN BI50N 



191 



the banks of streams in western Africa. These chevro- 
tains are very often called musk deer, a most unfortu- 
nate mistake, as they have no special affinity whatever 
with the true musk deer. 

The last group of ruminating animals consists of the 
camels and the llamas, whereof the former are Asiatic, 
while the latter are now confined to the western side of 
South America. The zoological position of the bison 
thus appears to be situated near one end of a vast series 
of ruminating animals, at the opposite end of which the 
camel has its place. These may'be represented in tabular 
form as follows : 

Camels and 

llamas 
Chevrotains 
Giraffes 
Deer 
Hollow-horned 

ruminants 




Euminants 



But the great group of ruminants, considered as a 
whole, forms one section of a yet larger group of animals 
which are characterised by having an even number of 
toes on each hind foot. As the end of each toe supports, 
or is enclosed in, a very large nail or hoof, the whole 
group may be distinguished as " even-toed hoofed beasts." 

The other section of this whole group consists of the 
hippopotamus and the swine of the Old World and the 
peccaries of the New World, and all these together con- 
stitute a group which may be distinguished as the " non- 
ruminating even-toed hoofed beasts." But this whole 
group of " even-toed hoofed beasts " thus divided into 
(i) '-ruminating" and (2) "non-ruminating" sections, 
has opposed to it another group of " odd-toed hoofed 



192 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

beasts," that is, beasts the number of whose hind toes, 
made use of in locomotion, is either one, as in the horse, 
or three, as in the rhinoceros and the tapirs. 

Horse, ass, &c. 
Odd-toed ■{ Ehinoceroses 
Tapirs 



Hoofed 
beasts or ■ 
Ungulates 



(Hippopotamus 
Swine 
Peccaries 
(^ Kuminatmg 

Thus we see that hoofed beasts, or ungulates, may be 
odd- or even-toed, that the even-toed may be ruminating 
or non-ruminating, and that the ruminating may be 
allied to camels, chevrotains, giraffes, deer, or hollow- 
horned cattle, and the bison is an exceptional form of 
the hollow-horned portion of the ruminating even-toed 
hoofed beasts. 

What relation, then, do hoofed beasts as a whole bear 
to all other beasts ? 

By understanding the answer to this question we shall 
come sufficiently to comprehend what a bison really is. 
We will begin by adverting to existing animals only, 
since if, as the most popular theory of evolution teaches, 
all existing kinds have been evolved, by minute modi- 
fications, from pre-existing kinds, then, if we could know 
the whole, we should be unable to draw any funda- 
mental distinctions at all between any groups of animals 
whatever, which would form an immense mass melting 
into each other by insensible gradations. Now, of the 
existing orders of mammals there are very few which show 
any affinity to the hoofed beasts, or ungulates. Certainly 
we can find no evidence of it among existing apes, lemurs, 
bats, insect-eaters, flesh-eaters, rodents or whales. The 
kangaroos among marsupials have been supposed to bear 



THE AMERICAN BISON 193 

a certain affinity to the ungulates or hoofed beasts, but 
this is no real affinity, but only a certain degree of ana- 
logical resemblance. In other words, it can have nothing 
to do -with essential affinity or any special relation- 
ship of descent. Again, a certain resemblance between 
such creatures as sloths, ant-eaters, and armadillos on 
the one hand, and hoofed beasts on the other, may be 
imagined to exist, on account of the very large claws 
which invest the ends of their digits and which might be 
considered as comparable with hoofs. But such a resem- 
blance would be but fanciful ; for sloths and their allies 
have no real affinity to either the odd- or even-toed 
ungulates. There are, however, two animals which have 
been supposed to possess an exceptional relationship to 
the ungulates — namely, the elephant and the hyrax, or 
cony of Scripture. 

But before considering the right which these two very 
different kinds may possess to claim a real affinity to the 
ungulates — that is, to all kinds of cattle — we must con- 
sider a few structural characters bearing upon the dis- 
tinctions which exist between hoofed beasts and other 
beasts and between different groups of ungulates them- 
selves. Now, in the first place, the fully developed foot 
of a beast — like the foot of man — consists of five toes, 
the end of each being furnished with a nail or claw. 
Each toe is supported by three bones attached, end to 
end, within it, except the great toe, which has but two. 
These five series of toe-bones are each respectively 
attached to the end of one of five longer and stronger 
bones, which lie along the middle of the foot, and so may 
be called middle-foot bones. They are attached by their 
other ends to a group of short bones, which may be called 
ankle bones, the hindmost of which forms the heel. The 
fore-feet of beasts and man's hands are both formed on 

N 



194 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

the same fundamental plan as is the hind foot. Each of 
the four fingers is supported by three bones, attached 
end to end, while the thumb, like the great toe, has but 
two. These five series of finger-bones are each respect- 
ively attached to the end of one of five longer and 
stronger bones which lie along the middle of the hand, 
and so may be called middle-hand bones. They are 
attached by their other ends to a group of short bones, 
which are the wrist bones. Now, very many beasts, like 
the bear, agree with man in walking with the entire sole, 
or plant, of the foot directly applied to the ground, and 
such are, therefore, called plantigrade. Others, Uke dogs 
and cats, walk on their toes only, and keep the soles of 
the feet and the parts which answer to the palms of our 
hands raised up from the ground. Such animals are 
called digitigrade, because they walk on their digits, which 
is a common term used to denote equally both fingers 
and toes. Now, no ungulates place the plant of the foot 
on the ground, while almost all of them do not rest even 
on their toes, but only on the very tips of their toes, for 
they walk on their hoofs — that is to say, on the great 
nails which encase the terminal bone of each finger and 
toe, or, in other words, the terminal bone of each digit. 
It is only in the camels and llamas, which are digitigrade 
and which have coarse nails instead of true hoofs. No 
ungulate has either a thumb or a great toe, while the 
number of digits may be reduced to one for each limb. 

In the odd-toed ungulates the bones of the foot are 
developed symmetrically on either side of an imaginary 
axis passing down the middle of that digit which cor- 
responds to our middle finger and middle toe. Such is the 
case even with the tapir, w^hich has four toes to each hind 
foot, though the outermost is not reckoned a functional 
one, the animal resting on but three. The rhinoceroses 



THE AMERICAN BISON 195 

have only three toes to each foot, while the horse, as also 
the ass, the zebra, and the quagga, has but one. It 
would be quite a mistake to suppose that the horse's 
foot consists of a hoof which is not divided ; it con- 
sists of but a single digit, and the horse's four feet 
answer to the tips of our two middle fingers and the tips 
of our two middle toes, and nothing else. The enormous 
toe which supports the horse contains three bones similar, 
except as to size and details of form, to those of our own 
middle finger and toe ; and similarly again, each fore digit 
is supported by a single middle-hand bone, and each 
hind digit is supported by a single middle- foot bone, at 
the top of which are the small bones of the wrist and 
ankle respectively. Thus, what is commonly called the 
"knee" of a horse is truly its wrist, and what is called the 
" hock " of a horse is really its heel. Though, however, the 
horse has thus but a single digit and middle-foot bone to 
each limb, there is, nevertheless, a slender bone on each 
side of it, though it bears no digit. These two slender 
bones, called by veterinary surgeons splint bones, are the 
only rudiments of the second and fourth toes. 

Such are the conditions found among existing odd- 
toed ungulates. With the even-toed group it is other- 
wise. There are always two toes equally developed and 
corresponding with our third and fourth toes, and the 
line of symmetry of the foot passes down between them, 
instead of along the middle of the third digit, as in the 
odd toed hoofed beasts. Two other digits, corresponding 
with our second and fifth digits, are very often present, 
but they are always smaller than the third and fourth 
ones. They are at least so in the hippopotamus. In 
the swine they do not reach to the ground. 

The only American non-ruminating, even-toed ungu- 
lates, the peccaries, present two exceptional characLors 



196 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

in the structure of their feet. In the first place, the 
hind- foot has three digits, yet this does not make it 
an odd-toed ungulate, because only two are functional 
and the line of symmetry passes down between them, as 
in the other even-toed hoofed beasts. The fore-foot is as 
in the swine. The other exceptional character is the 
median union of the upper portions of the two middle- 
foot bones into a single solid structure or cannon bone. 
This union exists in all the ruminants except the African 



Fig. 54. 




THE COLLARED PECCARY. 

water chevrotain. The camels and llamas have but two 
toes to each foot, but the other ruminants have generally 
the two lateral digits more or less represented. In the 
bison there are only minute representations of the two 
lateral digits, vfith the addition, in each fore foot, of a 
short rudiment of each corresponding middle-hand 
bone, but quite separate from the digits to which they 
correspond. 

Beasts in general have, like ourselves, three kinds of 
teeth — cutting teeth, in front ; eye teeth, called canines 



THE AMERICAN BISON 197 

because they are so big in the dog ; and grinding teeth. 
Of the first there are commonly six above and six below ; 
of the second, one on each side above and one below ; of 
the third kind, seven above and seven belo v on each side. 
This is the number in the swine, where the eye teeth 
become tusks, and it is almost the same in the hippopo- 
tamus and peccaries. The camels and llamas have fewer 
grinders, and only two cutting teeth in the upper jaw. 
In all the rest of the ruminants there are no cutting 
teeth in the upper jaw, which is clothed with a callous pad 
against which the lower cutting teeth and eye teeth 
(w^hich are shaped like the cutting teeth) bite. In most 
ruminants the upper eye teeth are wanting, as well as 
the upper cutting teeth, the whole front of the upper 
jaw being absolutely toothless. But in the camels, 
llamas, and chevrotains they are present, and in the 
musk deer, muntjacs, and Chinese water deer they are 
very large and prominent in the males. Among the odd- 
toed ungulates the tapirs are toothed, as to number, like 
the swine. The horse has one grinding tooth less on 
each side below, while the cutting teeth have an abso- 
lutely peculiar structure, each having a deep indention ■ 
or pit on the middle of its cutting surface. This pit, 
getting filled with particles of food, becomes of a dark 
colour, and constitutes what is known as the " mark." 
The presence of this " mark" shows that a horse has not 
exceeded a certain age, since when the tooth has worn 
down beyond the extent of the inflection, the "mark" be- 
comes thereby obliterated. The rhinoceroses have the 
same number of grinding teeth as swine have, and some- 
times have no teeth whatever in front of them, though' 
they may have four cutting teeth both above and below. 
For digestion, every beast possesses a stomach and 
intestine, and the latter tube has generally projecting 



198 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

from it on one side, at a certain point, an enlargement 
called a *'c9ecum." Now, all the odd-toed ungulates 
have a stomach, which is simple in shape, as is the 
human stomach, but they have an enormous and com- 
plexly formed csecum. All the even-toed ungulates, 
however, whether ruminating or non-ruminating, have, 
on the contrary, a complex stomach and a simple caecum. 
The most complex stomach is that of the deer and 
hollow-horned ruminants, each of which is provided with 
four cavities. The freshly cropped food passes down into 
the first cavity or paunch, whence it goes to the second 
compartment called, from the character of its lining, the 
honeycomb bag. Thence it passes upward to the mouth 
to be chewed once more, whence it descends again to the 
manyplies, so named from the many folds of membrane 
within it ; and then, last of all, goes to the true digestive 
chamber of the stomach, called the reed, which opens into 
the intestine. 

Three further points may be noticed, which though in 
themselves small, yet serve to distinguish the two great 
groups of ungulates from each other. There is a certain 
bone of the skull of man and beasts known as the wing- 
wedge bone, which bone may have a perforation or canal 
through which a branch of the carotid artery passes. 
The odd-toed ungulates have this, but the even-toed 
have it not. The bone of the thigh of man and beasts 
possesses two bony prominences, or trochanters. The 
evca-toed ungulates like ourselves have these two and 
no more, but the odd-toed ungulates also possess a third 
trochanter. The number of bones of the back, together 
with those of the loins, are seventeen in man. In ungu- 
lates they are never less than nineteen, and may be 
more, as in the horse, where they are twenty-four in 
number. 



THE AMERICAN BISON 199 

Thus the two great groups of hoofed beasts differ as 
follows : 

Odd-toed. Even-toed. 

Functional toes of hind foot, Even. 

odd. 

A simple stomach. A complex stomach. 

A complex cfficum. A simple caecum. 

A third trochanter to thigh Only two trochanters. 

bone. 

A canal in the wing-wedge bone. No such canal. 

More than nineteen back and Nineteen back and trunk 

trunk bones. bones. 

Of the two before-mentioned exceptional animals which 
have been supposed to be allied to the ungulates, the 
elephant exhibits all the above given characters of the 
odd-toed groups save that its thigh bone has but two 
trochanters. The toes of its hind foot are odd numbered, 
for there are five of them. Any one observing an 
elephant when it walks, and noticing the flat sole it 
applies to the ground, might well suppose it to be 
plantigrade, and, therefore, quite unlike any other ungu- 
late. But so to think would be a mistake, for it no more 
applies the sole of its foot to the ground than does a 
smart lady whose shoe is provided with a fashion- 
able high heel. Beneath the bones of the foot is a great 
pad, which increases in thickness backward, and thus 
raises both the heel and the wrist from the ground so 
much that the elephant is really digitigrade. Neverthe- 
less, the elevation is but slight and enormously less than 
in any cattle. As a consequence of this latter fact the 
proportions of the bones of its limbs are more human, 
and the thigh bone especially is, roughly speaking, so like 
man's that the finding of such remains might well have 
given rise to tales about giants. 

The hyrax, or coney of Scripture, is a small, short- 



200 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

limbed animal which was originally supposed to be allied 
to rabbits, rats, and other gnawing animals, or rodents. 
Cuvier, however, was led by various points in its anatomy, 
and especially by the structure of its teeth, to associate it 
with the rhinoceros, in spite of its being entirely clothed 
with hair, instead of the hairless, folded hides of the great 
nose-horned beasts of India and South Africa. 

Such are the forms of ungulate life now to be found 
on the surface of this planet, and such the relationships 
which appear to exist between them. There is a relatively 
small group of odd-toed beasts containing the three very 
distinct forms — the horse, the rhinoceros, the tapii* — 
and there is a very large group of even-toed beasts 
divisible into the two sections, one of swine-like beasts 
and the other the vast assemblage of ruminants whereof 
the American bison, or buffalo, is an extreme modifica- 
tion. Besides these there are the two outlying forms — 
the elephant and the hyrax — between which and the 
ungulates no connection now exists. But if we go back- 
ward in time a very different prospect opens before our 
eyes. We need only consider the tertiary rocks, the 
oldest of which is the Eocene formation, and as we recede 
we shall find a number of gaps to be filled up, the 
relative proportion of forms to become very different, 
while relationships, previously unsuspected, between 
the ungulates as a whole and other orders of beasts 
suggest themselves to our minds. Thus, the tertiary 
rocks of France, India, and North America have 
supplied us with a series of fossil remains which almost 
entirely bridge over the chasm now existing between the 
non-ruminating, swine-like beasts, and the ruminants. 
One of the most interesting, but also one of the most 
peculiar, of these was also one of the earliest known, 
having been described and carefully figured by Cuvier 



THE AMERICAN BISON 2oi 

from remains found in the gypsum beds of Paris, and 
named by him Anoplotherium. One of its most singular 
peculiarities consisted in the arrangement and proportion 
of its teeth, of which it had forty-four, those of each jaw 
being arranged in an unbroken series all of the same 
height — an arrangement which is found in no existing 
animal whatever, except man. Similarly, tertiary deposits 
in America, India, and Europe seem to show that the 
distinction we now find between pigs and peccaries had 
not then arisen. The range of various forms was also 

Fig. 55. 




THE BRAZILIAN TAPIR. 

widely different. The hippopotamus is now strictly 
contined to Africa, where, besides the common form, 
there is a pigmy species on the western side of that 
continent. But in later tertiary times the hippopotamus 
existed in India and in England ; while small species 
have left their bones in great quantities in the islands 
of Sicily and Malta. Similarly, as before said, that, in 
our days, exclusively African form, the giraffe, once existed 
in Greece, as well as in Persia, India, and China. 

As to our type, the bison of North America, remains 
of a now extinct form have been found, as before said, 
in Texas, and that has been thouojht to be the ancestor 



202 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIF^ 

of the existing species. But if extinct forms of even 
toed ungulates are numerous, those of the odd-toed ones 
show that the existing species (horses, asses, zebras, 
tapirs, and rhinoceroses) are but a poor surviving remnant 
of a vast quantity of very different species of the group 
which lived upon the earth's surface during tertiary 
times. The existing geographical distribution of the 
tapirs would by itself indicate that they must once have 
been much more widely distributed than they now are. 



Fig. 56. 




AFRICAN RHINOCEROS. 



In the present day they are found only in South and 
Central America on the one hand, and Sumatra and 
Borneo on the other, and all analogy would indicate that 
they must once have existed in regions intermediate 
between the New World and the Indian Archipelago. 
This their fossil remains abundantly prove to have been 
the case. In Miocene or Pliocene times they existed not 
only in both China, South Carolina, and Cahfornia, but 
also in France, Germany, and even in England. In the 
same way rhinoceroses which are now found nowhere 
but in South and Central Africa, India, and the Indian 



THE AMERICAN BISON 203 

Archipelago, were once widely distributed, both in 
Europe and North America; and carcases of a species 
which was clothed with woolly hair have been found 
preserved in the frozen ground of Northern Siberia. 
Another Siberian form, allied to the rhinoceros, had a 
very large horn supported on a huge prominence, situated 
further back on the head than is the horn of the existing 
rhinoceros. A small species found in the Miocene deposits 
of France, and an allied North American species, are 
distinguished by the singular fact that they possessed a 
pair of very small horns placed side by side, instead of one 
in front of the other, as is the case in all living rhino- 
ceroses which bear two horns. In the United States, 
during the Miocene period, enormous beasts abounded 
only inferior in size to the elephant, and which had a 
transverse pair of large, bony prominences over the nose, 
each of which probably bore a horny sheath during life. 
A numerous group of fossil forms existed in Eocene 
times both in Europe and in America, called lophiodonts. 
They are characterised by details of tooth structure 
which it would be out of place here to describe ; but the 
group includes a number of more or less imperfectly 
known forms, which ranged in size from the bulk of a 
rhinoceros down to that of a rabbit. 

When Cuvier discovered the Anoplotherium before 
noted, he also discovered another interesting, very dis- 
tinct, fossil animal, which he called Palceotherium. It 
had three digits to each foot, and is interesting as being 
one of the earliest fossil animals ideally reconstructed by 
its discoverer. But the fossils which are likely to be the 
most interesting to our readers are those which relate to 
that most favourite animal, the horse. There is a kind 
of wild horse in Central Asia, there are different wild 
asses in Africa, Syria, Persia, and Thibet; and there 



204 



TYPES OF ANIMAL LIrE 



HI 



are, or till recently were, four wild striped creatures of the 
horse family in Africa : These were i . The quagga, with 
stripes only on the head, neck, and fore part of the body. 
But a few years ago it was to be met with in great 
herds, ranging the vast plains which stretch between 
Cape Colony and the Yaal lliver. Now, however, it is 
a question whether any exist save in a few menageries. 
They have been trained to go in harness, although 



Fig. 57. 




THE TRUE OR COMMON ZEBRA. 

never really domesticated. 2. The true zebra, which was 
the one first discovered by Europeans, and which is 
figured in Buffon's " Natural History," is the most beauti- 
fully marked of all, the whole of the body being striped 
black and white down to the very hoofs. Its natural 
home was the mountainous country in the vicinity of the 
Cape of Good Hope, and it has now almost become 
extinct. 3. The third species is called Burchell's zebra, 
and used to be highly prized in menageries, as the rarer 
kind, because of its more distinct home beyond the 



THE AMERICAN BISON 205 

Orange Kiver. But it is now the only zebra commonly 
seen in captivity, and it still roams in herds over the 
plains north of the river just mentioned. Its numbers 
are, however, continually diminishing, for zebras are now 
shot by the natives for their hides, which are very 
valuable for leather, while their flesh is also much 
relished. The colour is pale, yellowish brown, except 
the limbs, which are nearly white. The head, neck, and 
body, but usually not the limbs, are striped dark brown or 
black. 4. The fourth and last kind is Grevy's zebra, 
which inhabits the country south of Abyssinia. It is 
generally marked like the true zebra, save that the bands 
are narrower. Such is the distribution of the species of 
the horse family in the present day. 

Wild horses were very common in Europe during 
what is called the polished-stone period, before the 
introduction of even bronze weapons. They were 
domesticated by man before the historical epoch, but the 
European domestic horse of modern times is in all prob- 
ability largely, if not mainly, the result of the importation 
into Europe, through Greece and Italy, of Asiatic horses 
which were domesticated in times still more ancient. 
They have been diffused by man almost all over the 
globe, and in America and Australia, where none existed 
when those regions were discovered by Europeans, they 
now roam in great herds. Yet, strange to say, horses 
were abundant in almost every part of America, from 
Eschscholtz Bay down to Patagonia, in the most recent 
geological age, though they had become quite extinct 
long before the arrival of the Spaniards. A number of 
fossil remains have been discovered which have been 
supposed, mainly on account of their tooth structure, 
to exhibit traces of the real pedigree of the horse. 
What is certain is that a number of creatures have 



2o6 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

lived which had toes in various degrees of reduction 
as to number. Thus a creature known as Hipparion, 
which existed in Europe, Asia, and North America 
during Pliocene times, instead of having but a single toe 
to each foot had three ; but the two lateral ones were 
quite minute and rudimentary, and in an Indian variety 
the lateral toes seem to have disappeared. It was of 
about the size of a donkey. In the lower Pliocene of 
North America another species with three digits was 
also found and was named Froiohippus by Prof. Leidy. 
Prof. Cope has suggested that this latter kind was the 
ancestor of the American horse, and that E.ipparion was 
the ancestor of the Old World horse. Should this opinion 
be verified it would be a complete demonstration that 
similar forms may have an independent origin, since the 
horses of America which became extinct closely resembled 
the horses of the Old World. A fossil beast from a 
lower formation, that of the Miocene, has been named 
Anchitherium. It was of about the size of a sheep and 
had three toes to each foot, whereof the lateral ones 
were less diminutive than in the two kinds last noticed. 
Sometimes it had in addition a rudimentary middle-foot 
bone, though with no digit attached to it. 

From yet lower rocks, those of the middle and upper 
Eocene, a still smaller animal has been indicated which 
has been named Pachynolophus, which not only had a 
large median digit with a smaller one on either side of it, 
but had also another and still smaller external digit. 
Lastly, in the lower Eocene remains of yet another beast 
have been found. It has been named Phenacodus, and 
had five digits to each foot. It has been regarded as the 
lowest root of that genealogical tree along which the 
modern horse has been supposed to have been evolved. 



THE AMERICAN BISON 207 

We hold our own judgment in suspense as to this 
question. 

Those outlpng forms, the hyrax and the elephant, if 
not actually brought nearer to the existing ungulates by 
the help of various species now known as extinct, are at 
least shown to be but some of many others which in 
different degrees approximate to the true ungulates from 
various sides. Only two kinds of elephant now exist, 
and the Asiatic is found nowhere but in the forests of 
India, Ceylon, Burmah, Cochin China, the Malay penin- 
sular, and Sumatra. The African elephant is confined 
to the south of the Sahara. Anciently it was fully as 
much domesticated as is the Indian elephant at present, 
and bore its part in the armies both of Carthage and of 
Rome ; but now it is only known wild and in menageries. 
But elephants formei'ly existed in North America, from 
Alaska to Mexico, as well as in England, Scotland, and 
Ireland, Europe and Siberia, where the woolly elephant, 
or mammoth, has been found frozen, like the woolly 
rhinoceros. Those elephant-like animals, with simple 
grinding teeth, the mastodons, ranged over both South 
and North America as well as India and Europe; 
whereas other elephantine animals, called dinotheria, 
which had tusks only in the lower jaw, have been found 
in Europe and Asia, but not in the New World. Among 
the most wonderful of all fossil animals ever discovered 
are certain creatures, as big as elephants, described by 
Prof. Leicly in 1872. They are among those wonders of 
an ancient and now extinct world of life which America 
has made known to us. Their bones were found in the 
Uinta Mountains, whence they have been named Uinta- 
beasts, or Uintatheria. One of the most curious of their 
peculiarities was the structure of the head, which bore 



2o8 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

no less tlian three pairs of protuberances, eacli pair being 
placed side by side. One pair was on the nose, one in 
front of the eyes, and one on the roof of the skull behind 
the eyes. 

It is America which has alone made us acquainted 
with four other very exceptional forms, a brief notice of 
which must conclude this article. One of them was at 
first thought to be a sort of gigantic llama, and, there- 
fore named Macrochenia. And the bones of its neck are 
formed on the type of those of the camels and llamas. 
Its limbs, however, are partly like those of the odd-toed 
and partly like those of the even-toed ungulates. Its 
grinding teeth resemble those of a rhinoceros, while its 
cutting teeth have " marks " like those of a horse. The 
bones of its nose also seem to indicate that it had a short 
proboscis. It must have been a very curious creature. 
Another South American extinct mammal was discovered 
by Darwin near Buenos Ayres and was about as big as a 
hippopotamus. It seems to have been singularly inter- 
mediate between the odd-toed and even-toed groups 
of ungulates, and has been named Toxodon. Yet another 
South American animal from the same region was rather 
larger than the giant of the rat and squirrel order, the 
capybara of the Hio de la Plata, which it resembles in 
general appearance. Unlike all known ungulates it has 
collar bones. It has been named Ty pother ium. Num- 
bers of allied kinds have also been discovered. Lastly, 
in the Eocene rocks of North America the remains of a 
group of animals have been discovered which have been 
named by Prof. Marsh Tillodontia. Some of these kinds 
were as large as a tapir. 

We said that the discovery of various fossil forms has 
suggested the existence of relationships and affinities 
between ungulates and other orders of mammals, which 



THE AMERICAN BISON 209 

relationships and affinities would not — apart from such 
evidences — have been suspected. Thus the capybara-like 
creature noticed last but one, suggests the existence of a 
distant affinity between ungulates and rodents (hares, 
rats, squirrels, (fee), while the Tillodontia, by the structure 
of their skull, teeth, and limbs, give rise to the notion that 
they are related both to the rodents and also to flesh- 
eating beasts, or beasts of prey, carnivores. Finally, the 
dinotherium has a certain affinity to the dugong and 
manatee — which are marine leg-less creatures, so that 
if the group of elephants has really any relationship 
to the ungulates, then these aquatic animals, entirely 
devoid of hind limbs, must possess such a relationship 
also. 

The results at which we arrive must remain largely 
speculative, until we have gained much fuller informa- 
tion with respect to forms of life which have for ever 
passed away. All we can say with certainty at present 
is, that the odd-toed group and the ruminating and 
non-ruminating even toed groups are all very distinct, 
surviving modified forms of a mass of species which at 
one time constituted a homogenous group, less diversified 
in structure than their descendants, and which seems to 
have been related by affinity to the rodents and possibly 
also to the carnivorous as well as to the dugong and the 
manatee. That great group gradually divided itself into 
two sections, the odd-toed and the even-toed. Of the 
vast mass of odd-toed forms the immense majority have 
disappeared, leaving three isolated and very divergent 
survivors — the tapir, the rhinoceros, and the horse. Of 
the mass of even-toed forms, a vastly greater number 
persist, although death and destruction have caused the 
formation of a wide interruption between swine-like 
creatures and ruminants. Of the latter, the richest 



210 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

section is that of the hollow-horned ruminants, among 
which are found those creatures most useful to man, the 
sheep and the goat, and that animal which was a very 
providence to the inhabitants of the region which is 
now the United States when it was first visited by 
civilised man, namely, the so-called buflalo or American 
pLson, 



yiii 

THE RACOON 

The racoon, absolutely peculiar to North America, 
may serve as an introduction to some knowledge of 
beasts of prey and carnivores in general, among which 
it occupies a somewhat exceptional position. It is a 
stoutly built quadruped^ although its coat of long coarse 
hair makes it look yet stouter than it really is. It is 
about the size of a badger, and has a sharp -pointed 
muzzle, rather short ears, and a moderately long, bushy, 
but cylindrically-shaped tail, marked with black and 
white rings. The general colour of its hair is greyish 
brown, and there is a light -coloured patch over either 
eye and on the side of the muzzle. The limbs are of 
medium length, and each paw has five toes. Those of 
the forepaws can be stretched wide apart and all the 
digits have arched and pointed claws which are nat re- 
tractile, like those of a cat. "When standing, the soles 
of the feet are wholly applied to the ground, so that the 
animal is what is called plantigrade, although in walking 
the heel is somewhat raised. Its grinding or molar 
teeth are mostly broad and rather flat, with moderate 
prominences, and no remarkably sharp blades adapted 
for cutting flesh. Its name of racoon, familiarly abbre- 
viated into coon, is a corruption of its Indian designation 
arathcone. It can make a good fight, an old coon being 
a good match for an average dog. Though very sly, 



212 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

racoons are caught in traps. They are not swift runners, 
and if pursued take to a tree. The racoon, though cap- 
able of being made a pet of, cannot be let loose with 
impunity, on account of its great curiosity, which leads 



Fig. 58. 




THE RACOON. 



it to find its way into the house and examine everything. 
It is very fond of sweets, and will remove covers from 
dishes, corks from bottles, and soon learn to unlatch 
doors. Its natural range extends all over the United 
States, both north to Alaska, and south to Costa Rica, 
attaining its largest size in the South. 



THE RACOON 213 

It stirs abroad but very little by day, and only when 
the weather is dull and cloudy. No North American 
animals are more strictly nocturnal, except bats and 
flpng squirrels. And it not only sleeps by day, but also 
during the winter. Yet it makes no specially comfort- 
able nest wherein to repose, but only coils itself up in a 
hollow tree or, by preference, in some dead branch ; for 
it chooses, no doubt for greater security, an elevated 
position. 

Racoons are carnivorous animals, and sometimes they 
eat poultry, but mice, small birds, eggs, insects, fruits, 
nuts, maize, frogs, crustaceous molluscs, and fish, are all 
welcome food to them. They are very expert in breaking 
down stacks of corn and stripping the husks from the 
corn, using their paws like hands. They swim well and 
will cross rivers without hesitation, but they cannot dive 
and pursue fish under water as otters do. They readily, 
however, obtain crawfish and mussels. They like to play 
in shallow water and overturn stones in search of craw- 
fish, and they have a singular habit of washing their food 
in water before eating it. There is a Southern species, 
called the crab-eating racoon, but that term could also 
be supplied to the Northern kind. The Southern one 
has, as might be expected, shorter fur, and it has also 
stronger teeth, but otherwise is very like the Northern 
kind, both in structure and habits. It is to be found 
all over South America as far south as the Rio Negro. 

There are two beasts, closely allied to the racoon, but 
more slender in build and with longer tails, found in 
some parts of the United States and North Mexico. One 
has been captured in Ohio, and in Oregon north-west of 
Jacksonville. Catamiztli was a name applied to this 
kind in Mexico, and it is also called cacomistle and the 
cat-squirrel by the Texans. Its real relationship to the 



214 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

racoon was long unsuspected, as it was taken to be one 
form of the very different group of civets. The Central 
American species is called Sumichrast's cat- squirrel. 
These two beasts go more on the tips of their toes than 
Fig. 59. 




THE COATI-MUNDI. 



do the racoons. They are readily tamed, and are made 
pets of by the miners of California. They dwell in 
woods, and make a moss-lined nest in a hollow tree, 
and are often betrayed by chips of wood which they 
will gnaw off round the mouth of the hole they 
inhabit. Their food consists of small kinds of beasts 



THE RACOON 



215 



and also insects. They are useful for destroying 
mice and rats, but are very destructive to poultry, and 
are naturally bold, and will fight furiously with claws 
and teeth. They prefer to inhabit woods traversed by 
water-courses. Two more species of animals, also entirely 
confined to the New World, are known as coati-mundis, 
Fig. 60. 




THE KINKAJOU. 

or coatis. One of these is confined to Mexico and Central 
America, and the other to South America, from Surinam 
to Paraguay. They are not so stoutly built as are the 
racoons, and have longer and more slender and tapering 
tails, but their main peculiarity consists in the possession 
of a very elongated and mobile snout or short proboscis. 
The coatis live mainly in trees, going about in troops of 
from eight to twenty individuals. They are also, like 



2i6 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

racoons, incUscriminate feeders, eating fruit and insects 
as well as birds and eggs. 

South and Central America produce another kindred 
animal, though very distinct in aspect and organisation. 
This is the kinkajou (Fig. 60), a strictly forest creature, 
found in the warmer parts of South and Central America. 
It t as a long body, but short limbs, which are well fitted 
for chnging to the trunks and branches of trees by the 
very strong and sharp claws with which all the toes are 
provided. But it is still better fitted for arboreal life 
by means of its tail, which is very long, and also strongly 
prehensile, like the tails of so many American monkeys. 
The kinkajou is of about the size of a; rather small cat, 
and is clothed with short, dense fur of a uniform pale 
yellowish-brown colour. It has a broad, round head, 
with very short ears and an extremely long and very 
extensile tongue, which is, no doubt, of much use to it 
in eating honey, of which it is very fond, although it 
will also devour eggs and small birds and beasts. It is 
a nocturnal animal of rather a gentle disposition, and it 
is easily tamed. In captivity it will live on oranges and 
bananas, which it eats greedily. It is not uncommonly 
found in holes of trees, where it lies concealed by day, 
issuing forth at night in pursuit of prey. Its woolly fur 
is much valued, and the skins are brought to market. 
Dampier, in his " Voyages," says : " The flesh is good, 
sweet, and wholesome meat. We skin and roast it, and 
then we call it pig, and I think it eats as well." There 
is yet another exclusively American animal — another 
sort of cacomistle, or cat-squirrel, about which a few 
words must here be said. There are two kinds, one 
named after Mr. Gabb and the other after Mr. Allen, 
and coming from Costa Rica and Ecuador respectively. 
Of one kind, only the skull is known, but the other has 



THE RACOON 217 

a very long body, and tall and short legs, and from its 
form and coloration it is so like a kinkajou that the 
Indians who accompanied its discoverer, the collector, 
Mr. Buckley, actually mistook it for that animal, 
although the snout is longer relatively and the head less 
rounded. An English naturalist, Mr. Oldfield Thomas, 
who has figured it, considers it to be a real case of 
mimicry. He observes, however, that it is very difficult 
to understand w^hat benefit to the creature it can be to 
be mistaken for the kinkajou, though a knowledge of 
its habits when gained may explain this. 

Thus, the racoon is a common familiar representative 
of a small group of quadrupeds almost entirely confined 
to America, which are beasts of prey indeed, but, as it 
were, of a mild and moderate kind, forming a sort of 
intermediate group between the more predaceous families, 
such as those which respectively contain the tiger, the 
wolf, the grizzly bear, and the weasel. The racoon tribe, 
or racoon family, has, however, a representative in the 
Old World, which is found in the south-eastern Hima- 
layas at from 7000 to 12,000 feet above the sea. It is 
known as the panda, is rather larger than a cat, and has 
semi -retractile claws. Its fur is of a rich reddish-brown 
colour, with the under part of the body the darkest, and 
its long tail has dark annulations. It lives mainly on 
fruit and other vegetable substances, such as acorns, 
sprouts of bamboo, roots, &c., and rarely eats flesh, 
although it is said to take insects. It frequents the 
woods of rocky regions. It is not a strictly nocturnal 
creature, although it sleeps much by day, coiled up like 
a cat, roaming abroad each morning and evening. .None 
of its senses are acute, and it is easily caught, being neither 
cunning nor ferocious. It drinks by inserting its lips 
into the fluid. The panda is easily tamed, but cannot 



2i8 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

endure either much heat or much cold. The young are 
born in a very helpless state, and long remain hidden in 
the nest placed in a hollow tree or in the fissure of some 
rock. It is a very interesting fact that a creature of this 
kind lived in England in the latter tertiary times, and 
thus the present scattered distribution of the racoon 
family is bridged over by the help of fossil remains, just 
as is the present scattered distribution of the family of 
tapirs among the hoofed beasts. 

The racoon tribe has been often supposed to be more 
nearly allied to the bears than to any other group of 
flesh-eating beasts, a relationship we much doubt. What- 
ever may be the value of this supposition, however, the 
Rev. Pere David discovered in 1869, in the almost in- 
accessible mountains of Moupin, in Thibet, a creature 
which, though it has a very short tail, is in some respects 
like the panda, though in others like a bear. It is said 
to feed principally on vegetable substances, such as 
bamboos and the roots of various plants. 

We may now pass on to consider the bear tribe. 
There are ten kinds of true bears, which range from the 
Arctic regions southward to Africa, north of the Sahara, 
the Indian Archipelago, and Ohih. No species, however, 
is common to the Old World and the New. None is 
found in central and southern Africa, none in Australia, 
and only one in South America. The bears are animals 
of considerable size, and among them are found the 
giants of the carnivorous order. They walk on the 
naked soles of their feet, have very short tails, mode- 
rately short, erect ears, small eyes, and fur which is 
generally long and shaggy, with claws which are long, 
strong, and non-retractile. The great white or polar 
bear of the Arctic regions is of the same colour all the 
year round. It lives on animal food, and very largely on 



THE RACOON 219 

fish j yet in the summer time it will eat a large quantity 
of gi'ass. The commonest and best known bears are the 
brown bear of Europe and northern Asia and the 
grizzly bear of North America — forms which some 
naturalists consider as merely varieties of the same 
species. Anyhow they are both very formidable animals. 
In cold regions the brown bear hibernates, and the 
varieties which inhabit warmer chmes are smaller in 
size than the northern forms. They once inhabited 
England, are still found in the Pyrenees, and are 
numerous in parts of Russia and also in Norway and 
Hungary. In the Himalayas, where they are now very 
numerous, they live at high elevations, and they come 
out of their winter sleep about March or April, when 
they feed largely on the bulbs of plants. They are very 
fond of succulent sweet fruits, but are also often carni- 
vorous, kilhng sheep or goats, or even cattle, and an 
instance has been recorded of a large bear killing two 
small ones and eating portions of them. Bears generally 
walk slowly, but they can run pretty quickly in a clumsy 
gallop. The young are born very small, scarcely larger 
than a good- sized rat; they are hairless, and remain 
blind for four weeks. Cubs of two different years are 
often found with the mother at the same time, and all 
remain with her till nearly three years old. Bears, as 
every one knows, are easily tamed, and they are also long- 
lived. One of them, maintained by the State of Berne in 
Switzerland, lived for forty-seven years, and a female 
thirty-one years old bore young. Neither the brown 
bear's sight nor its hearing is acute, but it has a delicate 
sense of smell. In the Himalayas and also in Persia and 
China a black bear is to be met with, and other species 
of black bears are found in Japan and North America. 
They are forest animals and eat fruit largely, as also 



TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



n 



maize and nuts. At the same time the black bear is 
the most carnivorous of the Indian bears. It kills 
sheep, goats, deer, and even cattle and ponies, but it 
occasionally feeds on carrion. Many natives are killed 
or severely injured by it. Its senses are more acute 
than are those of the brown bear, and it is an excellent 
swimmer. 

The single kind found in South America is called the 
spectacled bear, from the markings round its eyes. It 
inhabits the Peruvian Andes. The Malay bear is a 

Fig. 6i. 




THE SLOTH BEAR. 

small species with a black coat, strongly curved claws, 
small rounded ears, and a very long tongue. It is found 
from Burmah to Borneo, where it dwells in forests, being 
essentially frugivorous, though sometimes eating small 
beasts and birds. The most curious of all the bears is the 
sloth bear, an animal clothed with very long and coarse 
black hair, with an elongated greyish snout, a white 
horseshoe mark on the chest, and very long and curved 
white claws. Its eccentric appearance is due not only to 
its long, shaggy coat, but also to its peculiarly shaped 
head, long, mobile snout, and short hind legs, and likewise 



THE RACOON 221 

to its queer antics. In spite of the number which sports- 
men have destroyed, this is still one of the commonest 
wild animals of India, where it ranges from the Hima- 
layas to Cape Comorin and Ceylon. The following facts 
concerning this interesting animal are recorded by 
Mr. Blanford, F.K.S. : Its food consists almost entirely 
of fruits and insects, beetles and their grubs, the honey 
and young of bees, and the combs of white ants. Its 
powers of suction and of propelling wind from its mouth 
are very great, and it is thus enabled to procure its w^hite 
ant food with ease. On arriving at an anthill the bear 
scratches away with his forefeet until he reaches the 
large combs at the bottom of the galleries. He then 
with violent puffs dissipates the dust and crumbled 
particles of the nest, and sucks out the inhabitants of 
the comb by such forcible inhalations as to be heard at 
two hundred yards distance or more. In southern India 
these bears are fond of the fermented juice of the wild 
date palm, and climb trees to get at the pots in which it 
is collected. The animals are said at times to get drunk 
with palm juice. They are very fond, too, of sugar-cane, 
and do much damage to the crops. Bears generally have 
a habit of sucking their paws and of making at the 
same time a peculiar humming sound, and this is 
especially the case with the sloth bear. Except as 
regards this puffing and humming, the sloth bears are 
usually silent animals and have no '' call" for each other. 
When surprised or disturbed, however, and especially 
when wounded, they become very noisy, uttering a 
series of loud, guttural sounds, and when mortally 
wounded emitting peculiar wailing cries. As a rule the 
sloth bear is a timid animal, but occasionally it attacks 
man savagely, using both its claws and teeth, and 
clawing the head and face of its victim. Sometimes, 



222 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

especially when surprised suddenly and attempting to 
escape, a bear merely knocks a man down with a blow 
of its claws, often, however, inflicting severe wounds ; 
but in other cases it holds him with its claws and bites 
him savagely, not leaving him until after he ceases to 
struggle, and sometimes an onslaught appears quite un- 
provoked. The pairing time is mostly in June, and 
the young are generally born in December or January. 
When about two or three months old the mother takes 
her pair of cubs with her, carrying them on her back, 
where they cling to her long hair. They sometimes ride 
thus until of tolerable size, and one cub may sometimes 
be seen following its mother, while the other is carried. 
They take two or three years to reach maturity, and 
have been known to live in captivity for forty years. 
They are easily tamed when caught young, and, although 
fretful and querulous at times, are generally playful, 
amusing, good-tempered, and much attached to their 
masters. 

The family of bears agrees with the group of smaller 
animals, whereof the racoon is the type, in having grind- 
ing teeth in considerable number, but more or less 
blunt, and but very slightly adapted for cutting flesh. 
The claws are long and powerful, but never more than 
semi-retractile — as in the panda. With these animals, 
then, it will be profitable to contrast those creatures, the 
bodies of which are constructed in the most perfect 
manner known to us for a predaceous life — those which 
are so specially modified in tooth and claw as to fit 
them, beyond all other animals, for carnage and de- 
struction. Such, especially carnivorous animals, are the 
lions and tigers of the Old World and the jaguar 
and puma of the New, and a perfect type of all such 
animals is presented to us by the structure of the cat, 



THE RACOON 223 

for the whole cat tribe are formed almost in entirely the 
same manner. The reader is referred to a work of ours, 
entitled " The Cat," published by John Murray of London 
and Charles Scribner's Sons, New York. Therein the 
anatomy, physiology, development, and general natural 
history of the cat and cat tribe are set forth in detail. The 
cat's teeth are admirably adapted for cutting flesh, two 
opposite grinders especially, one in the upper and one 
in the lower jaw, having sharp cutting blades, which play 
one against the other like the blades of a pair of scissors. 
On this account these two teeth are known as the 
" sectorial " teeth. The small number of the teeth is also 
a noteworthy character. Behind the large eye teeth, or 
canines, there are in the lower jaw but three teeth on 
each side. Of these, the first is but a small one, while 
the third and largest is the lower sectorial tooth. 
In the upper jaw, the first tooth behind the canine is 
exceedingly small, and in some kinds of the cat tribe is 
wanting altogether. The third tooth is much the largest, 
and, with its sharp cutting edges, is the upper sectorial. 
Behind this is a very minute tooth, which has no cutting 
edges, but is like each of the grinders of the bear and 
racoon family, a tubercular tooth Except in the 
hunting leopard, or cheetah, all the claws are completely 
retractile. 

There are more than forty difierent species of the cat 
tribe. As was long ago remarked by BufFon, the great 
cats of the Old and New World are markedly distinct. 
The lion, tiger, leopard, ounce, clouded tiger, caracal, and 
cheetah, with a variety of smaller cats, are all inhabitants 
of the Old World only. The puma, jaguar, ocelot, 
jaguarondi, eyra, collocoUi, the pampas cat, and one or 
two others, are exclusively inhabitants of the New 
World. It is only among the lynxes that we find a form 



224 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

common to both sides of the Atlantic, the Canadian and 
north European lynxes being probably but varieties of 
one species. America is not so rich in species of the cat 
tribe as is the Old World, nor do its largest kinds, 
the puma and jaguar, equal the largest kinds of Asia 
and Africa. Strange to say, the West Indian Islands, 
although some of them, as Cuba and Hayti, seem 
admu-ably suited to shelter and support species of the 
cat family, are entirely destitute of them. The same is 
the case with the great island of Madagascar (in spite of 
its forests, with their numerous animal population), and 
also with Kew Guinea, New Zealand, and the whole of 
Australia. America, north of Arkansas and Louisiana, 
has the lynx and the puma. Europe has two species of 
lynx and the wild cat. It might be supposed that the 
domestic cat is simply the wild cat tamed, but it is 
probably a descendant of the Egyptian cat, which was 
domesticated in very ancient times. Eg}^t, as the 
granary of the ancient world, might well have been the 
country in which it was originally tamed. It was 
certainly domesticated there 1300 years before Christ, 
and there is a painting in the Egyptian Gallery of the 
British Museum of a tabby cat which seems to be aiding 
a man in the capture of birds. The Goddess Pasht, or 
Bubastis, the Goddess of Cats, was, under the Roman 
Empire, represented with a cat's head, and a temple at 
Beni Hassan dedicated to her is as old as 1500 B.C., while 
behind it are pits containing a multitude of cat mummies. 
The cat was an emblem of the sun to the Egyptians, and 
its eyes were supposed to vary with the course of that 
luminary, and it is a fact that the eyes of at least some cats 
do really change colour. Herodotus relates extraordinary 
stories of the veneration in which this animal was held 
by the Egyptians. He tells us that when a cat died a 



THE RACOON 225 

natural death in any house, the inhabitants of it would 
shave off their eyebrows, and that when a fire occurred 
their first care was rather to save their cats than to 
extinguish the conflagration. The domestic cat was a 
very precious animal in Western Europe in the Middle 
Ages, as is shown by the heavy fines imposed on those 
who should destroy one in Wales, Switzerland, or Saxony. 
As compensation, a payment was required of as much 
wheat as was needed to form a pile sufficient to cover 
over the body of the animal to the tip of its tail, the tail 
being held up vertically, with the cat's muzzle resting 
on the ground. 

The wild cat is still to be found in Southern Russia and 
the adjacent parts of Asia, Turkey, Greece, Hungary, 
Germany, Dalmatia, Spain, Switzerland, and, though 
now very rare there, France. Thanks to the destruction 
of forests in England, and the over-zeal of gamekeepers, 
the wild cat is now extinct in England, and perhaps in 
Wales also, although it was to be found in Wales thirty 
years ago, and in England sixty years ago. In Scotland, 
it is still far from uncommon, especially in Inverness, 
Hoss-shire, and on the West Coast of the Highlands. It is 
also found in Skye, but seems never to have existed in 
Ireland. 

All the various kinds of cats, from the lion downward, 
live naturally on warm-blooded animals which they have 
themselves killed. The only exception is the Indian 
fishing cat, which, besides fish, will eat fresh-water 
moUusks. The different species are not only very 
uniform in structure, but the uniformity of the colour 
is also remarkable. Some reddish, or yellowish shades 
more or less modified by grey or brown, may be said to 
be their ground tint, and this is generally marked with 
spots, or stripes of black, while the under parts of the 

P 



226 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

body are whitish. A few species, however, as the Hon, 
the puma, the jaguarondi, and eyra, are uniform in 
colour. Cats never hunt in packs as dogs and wolves do, 
and rarely pursue their prey in open ground, but spring 
upon it from some hiding-place. They are mostly noc- 
turnal, and the greater number, especially of the smaller 
kinds, habitually Hve in trees. The lion, the male of which 
distinguished from all other cats by its mane, is now 
found only in Africa, Mesopotamia, Persia, and North- 
Western India, although formerly it existed all over 
India and in South- Western Europe, the camels of the 
army of Xerxes having been attacked by lions in Mace- 
donia. It frequents sandy plains and rocky places, 
and is most active at night. As to the African lion, 
Drummond tells us : "I once had the pleasure of, unob- 
served myself, watching a lion family feeding. I was 
encamped in Zululand, and toward evening, walking out 
about half a mile from camp, I saw a herd of zebra 
galloping across me, and when they were nearly two 
hundred yards off I saw a yellow body flash toward the 
leader, and saw him fall beneath the lion's weight. 
There was a tall tree about sixty yards from the place, 
and, anxious to see what went on, I stalked up to it while 
the lion was still too much occupied to look about him, 
and climbed up. He had by this time quite killed the 
beautifully striped animal, but instead of proceeding to 
eat it, he got up and roared vigorously, until there was 
an answer, and in a few minutes a Honess, accompanied 
by four whelps, came trotting up in the same direction as 
the zebra, which, no doubt, she had been driving toward 
her husband. They formed a fine picture as they all 
stood round the carcass, the whelps tearing it and biting 
it. but unable to get through the tough skin. Then the 
lion lay down, and the lioness, driving her offspring 



THE RACOON 227 

before her, did the same four or five yards off, upon 
which he got up, and, commencing to eat, had soon 
finished a hind leg, retiring a few yards on one side as 
soon as he had done so. The lioness came up next and 
tore the carcass to shreds, bolting huge mouthfuls, but 
not objecting to the whelps eating as much as they could 
find." Every one who has heard it is deeply impressed 
with the lion's wonderful voice when he emits loud, deep- 
toned roars in quick succession, which get louder and 
louder^ and are then succeeded by muffled sounds like 
distant thunder. 

The tiger is an Asiatic animal exclusively, and ranges, 
in suitable situations, from the Amoor to the Island of 
Bali, and from Turkish Georgia to the Island of Sag- 
halin, but does not exist in Ceylon. In spite of the great 
destruction of tigers in India, they still live, according to 
Mr. Blanford, wherever large tracts of forests and grass- 
jungle exist, and they are specially common in the forests 
at the base of the Himalaya. Tigers at least occasionally 
accompany the tigress and her cubs, for these animals, 
like lions, are monogamous. The young remain with the 
mothers until nearly or quite full grown. By day the 
tiger takes up its abode in deep shade, especially in the 
hot season, and generally near water. They swim well 
and will even cross arms of the sea, but very rarely ascend 
trees. Tigers spring much less than is popularly sup- 
posed, and rarely move both their hind legs off the ground. 
They roar a good deal less than lions do, although their 
call is very similar. Mr. Blanford says : " When hit by 
a bullet a tiger generally roars, but tigresses, generally, 
or at all events very often, do not. I have on three occa- 
sions at least known a tigress receive a mortal wound and 
pass on without making a sound." The ordinary food of 
tigers consists of pigs, deer, antelopes, and, strange to 



228 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

say, porcupines, which one would think would be rather 
awkward mouthfuls. They also sometimes kill and eat 
bears and young gaurs and buffaloes, although such wild 
cattle, if adult, are more than a match for the tiger. 
When hard pressed during inundations they will eat fish, 
tortoises, lizards, frogs, and even locusts. They kill great 
numbers of domestic animals, and sometimes live entirely 
on cattle, and they have a distinct preference for beef 
over mutton. The tiger appears ordinarily to kill cattle 
by clutching the forequarters with its paws and then 
seizing the throat in his jaws from underneath and forcing 
it upward and backward until the neck is dislocated. 
The enormous muscular power of the^ tiger is shown by 
the way in which it can transport large carcases of oxen 
over rough ground, sometimes Kfting the body completely 
off the surface. A very hungry one will devour two 
hindquarters in one night, but generally remains three 
or four days near the carcass, feeding at intervals. A 
tigress with cubs is often very destructive, partly, it is 
said, in order to teach the young tigers to kill their own 
prey. Though they usually do so kill, they do not 
disdain carrion. Cases are even recorded of a shot tiger 
being devoured by another of its own species. 

The ordinary cattle -eating tiger is a great coward in 
the presence of man, and often allows himself to be 
pelted oflf. The man-eating tigers are those which have 
got fat and heavy, or, being disabled from age or injury, 
find man an easy prey ; and when once they have got 
over their innate fear of the human species such a tiger 
may become a fearful scourge. Thus, in Lower Bengal 
alone 4218 persons were killed by them between i860 
and 1866. In Bengal and Upper India tigers are hunted 
on elephants, the sportsmen shooting from howdahs. In 
Central and Southern India tiger shooting is chiefly 



THE RACOON 229 

attempted in the hot season, and the tiger is either 
driven by beaters past a tree on which the sportsman 
sits, or followed up, either on an elephant or on foot. 
Occasionally, especially when a tiger has been wounded, 
a herd of buffaloes are employed to drive him out of the 
cover, which they do very effectually, charging him in a 
body if he does not retreat. Tigers captured young, 
are easily tamed, and many of the adult animals in 
menageries are perfectly good-tempered, and fond of 
being noticed and caressed by those whom they know. 
They have repeatedly bred in confinement, although not 
so freely as lions, and the cubs more rarely thrive. 

That beautifully spotted animal, the leopard, or pan- 
ther, is a cat which has a very wide range, namely, from 
Algeria to Cape Colony in Africa, and in Asia from 
Palestine, China and Japan, to Ceylon, Java, Sumatra, 
and Borneo. In early times it also existed, as we know 
from fossils, in Great Britain, France, Germany, and 
Spain. Perfectly black leopards, which, however, in 
certain lights, show the characteristic markings of the 
fur, are not uncommon. The habits of leopards differ 
materially from those of tigers. The leopard is much 
more lithe and active, climbs trees readily, and makes 
immense bounds clear off the ground. It is as blood- 
thirsty and ferocious as any of the cat tribe ; it is bolder 
than the tiger, and not unfrequently attacks our own 
race. Instances have been known of one becoming a 
regular man-eater, and such a leopard is said to have 
killed in two years no less than two hundred human 
beings. Leopards are very fond of eating dogs and 
jackals, and are terrible foes to monkeys. The ounce is 
a lighter-coloured leopard, with longer fur, which inhabits 
the highlands of Central Asia, ascending to altitudes of 
from 9000 to 18,000 feet above the sea. The American 



230 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

so-called lion, or puma, ranges from Canada to Patagonia, 
and reached at one time from the Atlantic to the PacijB.c. 
It is still common in the dense forests which clothe the 
mountains of Central America. The most powerful of 
the American cat tribe, the jaguar, only extends from 
Texas southward nearly to Patagonia. 

The cats exhibit to us a structure of body specially 
modified for a predaceous existence. Nevertheless, 
certain extinct animals of the group had attained 
a more special and extreme organisation of the kind 
than is to be found in any existing species. These 
were the sabre-toothed tigers, remains of which have 
been discovered in different tertiary rocks in India, 
Europe (including England), and both North and South 
America. They had enormous canine, or eye teeth, 
the tusks of the upper jaw attaining a length of seven 
inches in one South American form which was about 
the size of a tiger. Also, the blades of these teeth 
were much flattened from within outward, their sharp, 
cutting edges being serrated like a small saw — a 
character but feebly developed in any of the large living 
cats. Moreover, the lower jaw was sometimes much 
broadened from above downward, the better to protect 
these enormously developed teeth, which in some species 
were so large that the jaws could not be opened beyond 
them, so as to allow them to be used for biting. They 
could therefore, only be made use of as daggers, the 
animal striking with them while its mouth was closed. 

Naturalists are now agreed that the group which in- 
cludes the civets, the genets, and the mongooses is one 
nearly allied to the cat tribe. It is a large and varied 
group which includes many species, but not a single one 
of them is to be found, except in confinement, on the 
American side of the Atlantic. Tney are creatures 



THE RACOON 



231 



with longer and more pointed muzzles than the cats, 
standing lower on the limbs, and with a second blunt or 
tubercular molar, or grinding tooth, on either side of the 



Fig. 62. 




THE POIANA, 



upper jaw, and claws less retractile than those of the 
cats. The civets are handsomely marked, striped and 
spotted animals, as are also the genets and three allied 
forms called linsangs, which come from India and the 
Malay Archipelago. The civets, about the size of a large 



232 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

fox, are the largest animals of the whole group. They 
are found in Africa and India, and produce that sub- 
stance, smelling so powerfully of musk, which has been 
an object of commerce for centuries. 

The Indian civet extends from Southern China to the 
Malay peninsula. It lives generally in a solitary fashion 
in woods or thick grass during the day, whence it comes 
forth at night, often entering houses. It is very de- 
structive to poulbry, and kills any birds or small beasts 
it meets with, but it will also feed on snakes, frogs, 
insects, eggs, fruit, and roots. The genets are but of 
the size of small cats, and have long and slender bodies : 
all of them are exclusively African except the common 
genet, which is a native also of the south of France, 
Spain, and South-Western Asia. A handsome species, 
which has been named Poiana (Fig. 62), comes from Sierra 
Leone ; and there is a small group of allied Indian forms 
known as palm-civets and toddy cats, which also got 
the name of paradoxures from F. Cuvier on account 
of a peculiarly curled condition of the tail. The long 
tails of these animals are not truly prehensile, but 
they can coil them to some extent, and in caged 
specimens the coiled condition not unfrequently be- 
comes confirmed and permanent. These animals are 
found from China and Nepal, to Ceylon, Java, Borneo, 
and the Philippine Islands. Mr. Blanford tells us that 
the common species, the Indian palm-civet, is a familiar 
animal enough in most parts of Hindostan, although 
rarely seen by daytime, as it is thoroughly nocturnal. 
It generally passes the day in trees, either coiled up in 
the branches or in a hole in the trunk. Cocoanut palms 
and mango groves are favourite resorts. It also not 
unfrequently takes up its abode in the thatched roofs of 
houses. It feeds much as the civet does, and when taken 



THE RACOON 



233 



young, is easily tamed. A nearly related species from 
Burmah and the Indian Archipelago has been named 




THE ARCTOGALE. 

A very exceptional form of allied animal is found in 
the Malay Archipelago — the bear-cat, or binturong. 
Its head and body are about two and a half feet long, 
and its tail is also upward of two feet. It has tufted 
ears, short limbs, and very long and harsh fur. It is a 



234 



TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



good example of the small value which characters drawn 
from the teeth only, possess as evidences of essential 
affinity between different animals — for the bear-cat's 
teeth are very small, and separated from one another by 
very distinct intervals. It is a strictly arboreal animal 




THE BINTURONG. 



with a slightly prehensile tail, and is very slow and 
cautious in its movements, and it is a creature of the 
civet tribe, specially modified for tree life. But another 
still more exceptional form is one specially modified 
for aquatic Hfe, although it is also able to climb trees. 
It is known as the Cynogale, and has short toes which 



THE RACOON 235 

are slightly webbed, a long head, with a broad, flattened 
muzzle, very long whiskers, and short ears and a short 
tail. It is also an inhabitant of the Malay Archi- 
pelago, and lives on fish, crabs, small beasts, and birds, 
and also, it is said, on fruit. 

Of the mongooses there are some twenty-one different 
species, the majority of which are Asiatic, and they have 
all relatively longer and more slender bodies, shorter 
limbs, and more pointed muzzles than the civets. The 
mongoose lives principally upon rats, mice, snakes, 
lizards, eggs, insects, and any small birds it can catch. 
It is an excellent ratter, and is said to be able to kill a 
dozen full-grown rats in a minute and a half. Its intro- 
duction into Jamaica is said to have resulted in a saving 
of more than ;^i 00,000 a year in protecting the sugar 
canes from rats. Much has been written about the 
combats between this animal and venomous snakes, 
and the immunity it is said to enjoy from the 
effects of the serpent's bite. Mr. Blanford, whose 
experience is so great, observes : " The prevalent belief 
throughout Oriental countries is, that the mongoose, 
when bitten, seeks for an antidote, a herb or root known 
in India as manguswail. It is scarcely necessary to say 
that the story is destitute of foundation. There is, how- 
ever, another view, supported by some evidence, that the 
mongoose is less susceptible to snake poison than other 
animals. I have not seen many combats, but so far as I 
can judge the mongoose usually escapes being bitten by 
his wonderful activity. He appears to wait until the 
snake makes a dart at him, and then suddenly pounces 
on the reptile's head and crunches it to pieces. I have 
seen a mongoose eat up the head and poison glands of a 
large cobra, so the poison must be harmless to the 
mucous membrane of the former animal. When excited, 



236 



TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



the mongoose erects its long, stiff hair, and it must be 
very difficult for a snake to drive its fangs through this, 
and through the thick skin which all kinds possess. In 
all probability a mongoose is very rarely scratched by 
the fangs, and if he is very little poison can be injected. 
It has been repeatedly proved by experiment that a 
mongoose can be killed like any other animal if properly 
bitten by a venomous snake, though even in this case 
the effects appear to be produced after a longer period 
Fig. 65, 




THE FOUSSA. 

than with other beasts of the same size." There are 
some small allied forms in Madagascar, where alone is 
also to be found the most cat-like of the whole group — 
the f oussa. This animal was described and named many 
years ago in the first volume of " The Transactions of 
the Zoological Society of London," and has been recently 
imported into that society's gardens. 

To the tribe of civets, genets and mongooses, succeeds 
another small group of exclusively Old World mammals, 
which are di6ferent indeed in size and form from the 
last-named animals, and yet in essential structure are 
closely allied to them. The group referred to is that of 



THE RACOON 237 

the hyenas, whereof there ai e three species — one common 
to Northern Africa and Southern Asia, and the other 
two confined to Africa south of the Sahara. No pre- 
daceous animals have teeth so powerfully formed for 
crushing bones as have the hyena s^ and they will eat up 
3uch as have had the flesh picked off by vultures and 
jackals. But although the main food of the hyena 
consists of the bodies of animals which it finds already 
killed, it will occasionally carry off to its den living sheep, 
or goats or dogs, and there devour them. Mr. Blanford 
tells us that in India the hyena is universally despised 
for its cowardice, and that in spite of its powerful teeth 
it rarely attempts to defend itself. It is occasionally 
ridden down and speared, but unless the ground is 
peculiarly favourable for horses, it will give a good run 
before being killed, not on account of its speed, for it is 
easily caught by a good horse, but from the way it turns 
and doubles. An instance is related in which a hyena, 
after being slightly wounded by a spear, was pursued by 
a game old Arab horse who had lost his rider, and who 
attempted to seize the hyena with his teeth and to strike 
him with his fore foot, an attack which the hunted 
animal only acknowledged by tucking its tail tightly 
between its legs. Hyenas are easily tamed if captured 
young, and become very docile and greatly attached 
to their masters. In ancient times hyenas were com- 
mon not only on the continent of Europe but also in 
England. 

The binturong has already shown us how the teeth of 
one species of a group may vary by defect from those of 
its congeners. This fact is made yet more evident by a 
South African animal named aard (or earth) wolf by the 
Dutch colonists. Save for its greater slenderness, this 
animal has the general form of a hyena, with very erect 



238 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

and pointed ears and a well- developed mane along the 
middle line of the neck and back. Its mane can be 
erected at will, and gives the animal a formidable look. 
But it is a mere game of brag, for its teeth, except 
the canines, are quite rudimentary and insignificant. 
Observations made upon specimens in menageries show 
its harmlessness, and that it has neither the inclination 
nor the power to feed upon living beasts and birds. It 
feeds only upon decomposing animal substances and 
upon grubs and white ants, and is a nocturnal, burrowing 
beast. Thus, the civet tribe and the hyenas are, as it 
were, zoological cousins to those most perfect of preda- 
ceous beasts, the cats. 

The bears, on the other hand, have also been supposed 
to have for their zoological cousins creatures which are 
mostly small in size, though many of them are great in 
value, since among them are included the sable, the 
ermine, and the mink, and other kinds zealously hunted 
for their valuable fur. For ample details . the reader is 
referred to a work compiled in 1877 by Dr. Elliott Coues 
on " Fur-bearing Animals," printed at the Government 
Office at Washington. They may be spoken of as of the 
weasel tribe, as we speak of the cat tribe and the civet 
tribe. The largest of the weasel tribe, and the most 
bear-like in aspect is the glutton, or wolverine, which has 
a heavy body supported on thick-set, rather low legs, 
with nearly plantigrade feet, and long, curved claws. It 
ranges over the north of both hemispheres, descend- 
ing in America down to the borders of Arizona and T^ew 
Mexico. Its food consists of hares, foxes, beavers, 
squirrels, grouse, and reindeer, and it is said to attack 
even horses and cows. It has a curious propensity to 
steal and hide things, even objects which can be of no 
possible use to it. Dr. E. Ooues relates a singular in- 



THE RACOON 239 

stance of this habit. A hunter and his family having 
left their lodge unguarded during their absence, on their 
return found it completely gutted. The walls were there, 
but nothing else. Blankets, guns, kettles, axes, cans, 
knives, and all other paraphernalia of a trapper's tent 
had vanished, and the tracks left by the beast showed 
who had been the thief. The family set to work, and by 
carefully following up all his paths recovered, with some 
trifling exceptions, the whole of the lost property. The 
common badger is another of the weasel tribe of consider- 
able size, being from two and a half to three feet long, and 
Fig. 66. 




^^. 



THE AMERICAN BADGER. 

standing about one foot high at the shoulder. There 
are some half-dozen species of true badgers, all peculiar 
to Europe and Asia, including England and Japan. 

Another kind is the hog-badger, which is found 
nowhere but in Central and Southern Asia. A small, 
burrowing kind, called the teledu, is found in the moun- 
tains of Java, while a form quite different from all 
these — the American badger or braro — is widely spread 
over North America. It is, however, most rarely seen, 
since it not only burrows, but lives almost as much 
under ground as does a mole, while in colder latitudes it 
hibernates during a considerable portion of the year. 
Dr. Coues says that he has travelled for davs and 



240 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

weeks in regions where these badgers abounded, and 
where their innumerable burrows offered the principal 
obstacle to progress on horseback or by wheeled con- 
veyance, yet he never saw more than five, and they were 
in sight but a few moments as they hurried to the 
nearest hole. They prey upon other and much smaller 
burrowing beasts belonging to the rat and field-mouse 
order, and also on insects, snails, and birds' eggs. They 
are very fond of the stores of wild bees, the honey, wax, 
and grubs being alike devoured. But the creature of 
the weasel tribe most notoriously fond of the honey is 
the ratel of Africa and India, a beast very much of 
the build of a badger, with a head and body a little over 
two and a half feet long and a tail half a foot long. It 
is found all over Hindostan, but not in Ceylon, and is 
strictly nocturnal, remaining in its burrow by day. 
Though it eats honey when it can get it, rats, birds, 
frogs, and insects are eaten also. It is, by the natives 
of India, suspected of digging into graves to eat the 
bodies of the dead, but there is no foundation for such a 
suspicion. 

The martens, sables, polecats, stoats, ermines, and 
weasels form a very natural assemblage of loug-bodied, 
short-limbed, small beasts of prey, exceedingly blood- 
thirsty in their habits. The martens are only found in 
the northern hemisphere, where they range through the 
greater part of both the Old "World and the New. Their 
sectorial teeth are very efficient flesh cutters, and there is 
but one tubercular tooth behind it in either jaw. They 
live in trees and climb with great facility. The sable of 
the Old World is found chiefly in Eastern Siberia. The 
New World sable is extensively distributed in North 
America from Newfoundland to Colorado. In spite of 
the persistent and uninterrupted destruction to which it 



THE RACOON 



241 



is subjected, Dr. Coues tells us that up to 1877 it did 
not appear to have materially diminished in numbers in 
unsettled parts of the country, and this, although the 



Fig. 67. 




THE SKUNK. 



annual imports into Great Britain have exceeded 
100,000. That beautiful little animal, the ermine, 
ranges over Northern Asia, Europe, and America. The 
tip of its tail remains black when all the rest of its fur 



242 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

turns white. The utility of this persistence to the 
animal itself is problematical. It is certainly the cause 
of its persistent pursuit by man. One most curious mem- 
ber of the weasel tribe is the skunk (Fig. 67), an animal 
conspicuously marked with black and white, and with a 
long tail handsomely clothed with abundant fine hair. 
The common skunk ranges from Hudson's Bay to 
Guatemala. It preys on small beasts, birds, and 
reptiles, but especially on insects and mice. As to this 
animal A. R. Wallace tells us that while staying a few 
days in July, 1887, at the Summit Hotel on the Central 
Pacific Railway, he strolled out one evening after dinner, 
and on the road, not fifty yards from the house, he saw 
a pretty little white and black animal with a bushy tail 
coming toward him. As it came on at a slow pace and 
without any fear, although it evidently saw him, he 
thought at fii-st that it must be some tame creature, 
when it suddenly occurred to him that it was a skunk. 
It came on till within five or six yards of him, then quietly 
climbed over a dwarf wall and disappeared under a small 
outhouse, in search of chickens, as the landlord afterwards 
told him. As is well known, the skunk possesses the 
power of ejecting a most ofifensive secretion, and this 
effectually protects it from attack. The odour of the 
substance is so penetrating that it taints and renders 
useless everything it touches. Provisions even near it 
become uneatable, although the skunk's own flesh is white, 
and sweet, and even said to be delicious eating. Clothes 
saturated with it will retain the smell for several weeks, 
even though they are repeatedly washed and dried. A 
drop of the liquid in the eyes will cause blindness, and 
Indians are said not infrequently to lose their sight 
from this cause. Owing to such a remarkable power of 
offence, the skunk is raiely attacked by other animals, 



THE RACOON 243 

and its black and white fnr and the bushy white tail, 
carried erect when disturbed, form wdiat Mr. Wallace 
regards as danger signals by which it is easily dis- 
tinguished in twilight or moonlight from other animals. 
Its sense that it needs but to be seen to be avoided gives 
it, he thinks, that slowness of motion and fearlessness of 
aspect for which it is remarkable. 

We have already seen how, among the civet tribe, there 
is a form, the cynogale, specially modified for aquatic 
life. Among the weasels there is also a form thus 
modified, namely, the well-known otters. They are all 
long-bodied, long-tailed animals, with flattened heads 
and short limbs, which have webbed toes, furnished 
with small, blunt claws. Otters, of which there are 
some sixteen species, are spread over the whole earth 
save in the Australian region. Most expert swimmers 
and divers, feeding almost exclusively on fish, which, when 
captured, they bring to shore to devour, they are rarely 
met with far from water. The most extremely modified 
form is found nowhere but on the rocky shores of 
certain parts of the North Pacific Ocean, especially the 
Aleutian Isles, Alaska, and down to Oregon. It is 
clothed in beautiful soft fur, which is so valued that 
much danger exists of the absolute extermination of the 
whole species. They feed on clams, mussels, and sea 
urchins, of which they are very fond, and which they 
break by striking the shells together while held in each 
fore paw, sucking out the contents as they are fractured 
by these efforts ; they also undoubtedly eat crabs and 
the juicy, tender fronds of seaweed, and sometimes, no 
doubt, also fish. 

The only predaceous animals which it now remains to 
refer to are the creatures of the dog tribe — the dogs, 
jackals, wolves, and foxes. The structure of these animals 



244 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

is so well known, and they are all formed so almost com- 
pletely on one type, that but few words need here be said 
about them. They are all strictly digitigrade animals 
with long muzzles and two tubercular teeth behind each 
sectorial tooth, except the long-eared Cape dog, which 
has more, the dholes, which have one less below, 
and the bush dog, which has one less on each side, 
both above and below. All have five toes to each fore 
paw and four toes to each hind paw, except the hyena- 
dog, which has no more than four toes to any of its feet. 
There are above thirty-five species of the dog tribe, and 
some are found naturally in every quarter of the globe, 
except that the dingo of Australia rnay have been arti- 
ficially introduced there. The fox is cosmopolitan, except 
as regards Australia and South America. In the Old 
World, species of the dog tribe are found from Spitz- 
bergen and Siberia to the Cape and Java ; and in the 
IN'ew World, from the shores of the Arctic Ocean to 
Tierra del Fuego and the Falkland Islands. They are, 
however, not naturally natives of Madagascar, the West 
Indies, New Zealand, Celebes, the Philippine Islands, or 
Ceylon. The wolf, fox and Arctic fox are common to 
both the Old World and the New. Of the remaining 
thirty-two species, twenty belong to the former, while 
only twelve are pecuhar to the latter. 

Such, then, are the groups into which the existing 
beasts of prey may be divided, and thus we may come to 
ajDprehend " what is a racoon," as far as science yet 
enables us to answer that question. We find that car- 
nivorous animals are made up of a dog tribe, a weasel 
tribe, a hyena tribe, a civet tribe, a cat tribe, a bear 
tribe, and a racoon tribe. Among all these the racoon 
and its allies holds a peculiar, because a more or less 
neutral, position. The dogs, the cats, and the bears 



THE RACOON ?45 

present us respectively with three very marked distinct 
forms, and it has been proposed to divide the whole of 
the carnivora into these three groups, associating the 
civets and hyenas with the eats on the one hand, and the 
weasels and racoon group with the bears on the other. 
But when we turn to study those lithographs of past 
history — fossil remains — we find apparently connecting 
links between the dogs and the bears on the one hand, 
and between the dogs and the civets on the other ; while 
yet others seem to connect the civets and the weasels. 
In this puzzling maze it seems we must provisionally 
rest contented with the groups indicated by the study of 
existing species, which are the only ones of which we 
can know more than the bones and teeth. Of these the 
dogs, cats, bears, and weasels seem each to constitute a 
very distinct group, nor do the racoons really resemble 
the bears, except in the number of their blunt or tuber- 
cular grinders, while the civets and hyenas do approach 
the cats. Thus we find the racoon to be a type of a 
very small independent group of beasts of prey, standing, 
as it were, in the midst of the dogs, cats, weasels, and 
bears, without showing a decided and unmistakable 
affinity with any one of them. As to its special relation- 
ship with extinct forms of life, as yet we know too little 
to venture upon any affirmation. 



IX 

THE SLOTH 

*' The inertia of this animal is not so much due to 
laziness as to wretchedness, it is the consequence of its 
faulty structure. "With thighs ill-articulated its legs are 
too short, badly formed and worse terminated. For it 
has no sole on which to rest its foot, nor thumbs, nor 
separately movable fingers, but only two or three very 
long claws, curved downwards, which cannot be moved 
separately, and are more inconvenient for walking than 
serviceable for climbing. Inactivity, stupidity, and 
even habitual sufiering result from its strange and 
ill-constructed conformation. Having no weapons for 
attack or defence, no mode of refuge even by burrow- 
ing, its only safety is in flight. Confined within the 
narrowest range, only climbing with difficulty or drag- 
ging itself along painfully, never allowing its plaintive 
voice to be heard except at night, everything about it 
shows its wretchedness and proclaims it to be one of 
those defective monsters, those imperfect sketches, 
which Nature has sometimes formed, and which, having 
scarcely the faculty of existence, could only continue for 
a short time and have since been removed from the 
catalogue of living beings. Truly, if the sloths did not 
inhabit deserts, if man or powerful animals had multi- 
plied where they have their abode, they would not have 
lived down to our days, but would have already met 
with that extermination which will befall them later. 
They are the last possible term amongst creatures of 
flesh and blood, and any further defect w^ould have made 
their existence impossible. To regard these imperfect 



THE SLOTH 247 

sketches of animal life, as being as good as others ; to 
admit final causes for such ill-proportioned creatures, 
and to find that Nature is as admirable in them as 
in her finest works, is to take a most narrow view of 
the world and make our own ideas of finality the tests of 
Nature's aims." 

In this quotation we have a memorable example of 
the errors into which the greatest thinkers may some- 
times fall. It records a rash judgment (with respect 
to the sloth) which the illustrious zoologist Buffon 
allowed himself to make, and which he has recorded 
in the thiiteenth volume of his immortal " Natural 
History." When we recall to mind how sagacious a 
thinker the great French naturalist was, the luminous 
suggestions, far in advance of his time, which he often 
threw out — as for example in his general comparison 
between the animals of the Old World and the New — 
we may well wonder at his having written such a 
passage as that above cited. However as Homer, in the 
realm of poetry sometimes nods, so there is hardly a 
man of science or an historian who does not occasionally 
offer us some prosaic error. Thus Isaac Newton 
strangely boasted that he made no hypothesis, Linnaeus 
classed together the walrus and the sloth, Cuvier fancied 
that from a fossil ''foot" he could construct an extinct 
Zoological ''Hercules." His restorations were indeed 
wonderful, but the principle he enunciated is none the 
less untenable. Moreover, he strangely failed to under- 
stand the true affinities of the barnacle, nor were 
pouched-beasts by any means correctly appreciated by 
him in spite of his zoological and anatomical genius. 
Our own "Prince of Anatomists," Owen, suffered 
ruefully from his failure to appreciate an ape's " Hippo- 
campus Minoi'," while his vigorous opponent Huxley 



248 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

stood sponsor for that never-to-be-forgotten creature of 
the fancy " Bathybius." 

Similarly, Buffon was led by his imagination, to be at 
once unjust to Nature and to such a marvellous produce 
of Nature as the sloth. That animal is truly no less 
admirable in its organisation than is any which Buffon 
would have regarded as being one of Nature's " finest 
works," and far from being an imperfect and tentative 
sketch of animal life, it is a fully completed study of 
perfect adaptation of structure to need. 

The fact is, no animal can be correctly appreciated by 
us if we do not well understand the circumstances of its 
being, its surrounding conditions. Each creature's struc- 
ture is an expression and manifestation of that interplay 
of influences and activities between its own being and 
its environment, which constitutes its life. Buffon mis- 
took the sloth's organisation because he was ignorant of 
the nature of the region it inhabits, namely the vast 
forest region of South America. The creatures of that 
region are formed exceptionally for arboreal life, as we 
have already seen with respect to the spider-monkeys 
and howling-monkeys. In that immense continent of 
foliage, Brazil, we have indeed a land which has pro- 
duced, as it were, a great symphony of organic harmony 
composed in the forest " key." There we find, specially 
modified for an existence amidst trees, many orders of 
animals which elsewhere are not so modified, and above 
all the sloth, which is a creature fitted for the forest, as 
the camel for the desert, the dolphin for the water, or 
the eagle for the air. The colour of the abundant 
verdure even gains upon the animal world itself, and 
snakes and lizards, frogs and insects wear a livery of 
green. Not only colour but even form, may be thus 
affected, and the strange leaf-insects crawl above each, 



THE SLOTH 249 

being in limb and body apparently a perfect foliar 
fragment. 

The sloth then is an animal specially formed to dwell 
nowhere but in luxuriant forests and to feed exclusively 
on the leaves of trees, young shoots and fruits. Such 
food is there abundantly and perennially supplied on 
every side. Therefore it has not the slightest need for 
rapid motion to obtain it, and it would evidently be an 
economy, were it enabled to remain permanently in the 
midst of such abundance without the necessity of 
descending to the ground. And this is just what the 
sloth is enabled to do. He dwells, as it were, in a 
palace of many chambers, lined with beautiful hangings 
and many ornaments, all of which are good to eat, 
and all of which, after being eaten, are replaced as if by 
magic, to serve later for another repast, and so on with- 
out limit. 

But to live thus, ever high up amidst the leafy 
branches of the forest and to dwell there securely by 
night and day, while being at the same time devoid of 
the activity of monkeys and other such arboreal beasts, 
necessitates a special and peculiar structure. Evidently 
less call is made upon the vital powers of an animal if it 
hangs passively, than if it has to hold itself up actively 
upon the trunk or branches of trees. The whole organi- 
sation of the sloth is dominated and governed by this 
need, the need of hanging passively and permanently, 
without any exertion or effort, from the branches of the 
trees amidst which it lives. But evidently, again, it is 
impossible that an animal formed to do this, can at the 
same time be organised so as to move well and freely on 
the surface of the ground, for which the stress and 
leverage must be altogether different. Hence the struc- 
ture of such a creature must seem very defective to 



250 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

any one who only observes its motions on the surface of 
the soil, a position in which it naturally hardly if ever 
finds itself. Hence arises the apparent disproportionate 
length of its arms compared with that of its legs, and also 
the seemingly most defective conformation of its hands and 
feet. Sloths pass their lives hanging under the branches 
of trees, back downwards and so they can sleep securely. 
There they continue to hang even after death, till 
decomposition has far advanced, as any collecting natu- 
ralist may chance to find to his great disappointment. 
Sloths are difficult of detection, partly on account of the 
slowness of their movements, but more on account of their 
external appearance ; for they are clothed with dry shaggy 
hair, often of a greenish tint, so that they are by no means 
unlike the masses of moss and lichen with which the 
forest trees abound. This green tint is not due to the 
colour of the hair itself, but to a minute algoid plant 
which lives upon the hair of the animal, the surface of 
each hair being peculiarly grooved. The growth of this 
small plant is also further favoured by the excessive 
dampness of the gloomy tropical forests, and it soon 
disajDpears from the hair of animals kept in captivity in 
England. 

There are certain small points of structure wherein 
the sloth more resembles a reptile than a beast, and it is 
also reptilian in its great tenacity of life and the per- 
sistence with which muscular movement can be induced 
in the body after death. It will survive the most 
severe injuries, and can be given large doses of poison 
with impunity. Thus the sluggishness of its nature 
seems to extend into the very substance of its body. 
Therewith it is naturally a most inofiensive animal, 
nocturnal in its habits, solitary and almost always silent. 
The female has usually but a single young one at a time. 



THE SLOTH 251 

Many an arboreal animal is furnished with a prehen- 
sile tail, but the tail of the sloth is quite rudimentary. 
Being thus deprived of one mode of prehension, it is 
necessary that its other means of clinging should be all 
the more trustworthy. And nothing could be more 
trustworthy than those of the sloth, which consist 
only of its hands and feet, each one of which is so 
modified as to be, practically, but a somewhat movable 
hook. This is due to the fact that the fingers and toes 
of each hand and foot are so closely bound together 
that they cannot be separated; while each finger and 
toe is furnished with an enormously long and very 
strong nail greatly curved. When at rest, the hands 
and feet are so bent that each thus forms a strong 
hook, and it requires an effort on the part of the animal 
to unhook either a hand or foot from the branch it 
clasps. Thus it is that the sloth can sleep suspended 
from a branch, and remain so after death. But the fore 
paws can grasp and carry to the mouth, fruits, twigs with 
leaves or other objects, so that these paws do answer the 
purpose of hands in spite of their fingers being so closely 
bound together. 

We have hitherto spoken of " the sloth," as if there 
was but one kind. There are however several kinds 
which form two distinct groups or " genera." The first 
genus contains the species known as the unau, or two- 
toed sloth, because it has only two fingers, fully developed 
and with long claws, to each hand ; these two fingers 
answer to the index and middle fingers of the human 
hand. In captivity, the unau will eat bread and milk, 
vegetables and fruits, either cooked or raw. Its voice 
has been compared to the bleat of a sheep, but is seldom 
heard. It will also snort violently when seized. 

The sloths are very exceptional with respect to the 



TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



^ 



252 

bones of the neck. Every other mammal besides them 
— with two solitary exceptions — has the same number of 
these bones. Whether the neck is extremely long, as in 
the giraffe, or extremely short as in the mole, and still 
more so relatively in the whale, and porpoises, seven 




THE TWO-TOED SLOTH, 



neck-bones and no more are always present. The same 
is also the case with man. One variety of two-toed 
sloths has also seven neck-bones, but a closely allied 
form, called Hoffman's sloth, has only six. This latter is 
the more northern kind of unau, and it extends from 
Ecuador, through Panama, to Costa Rica, 

The other genus of sloths contains the " ai," or 



THE SLOTH 253 

three-toed sloth, the hand of which is a triple-hook, 
formed of three digits (each armed with a long strong 
claw), which answer to the three middle fingers of the 
human hand. There are several varieties of the three- 
toed sloth, but they all agree in one more exceptional 
character,, since no other beast whatever possesses it. 
This is the possession of no less than nine bones, or 
" vertebrae," in the neck. What may be the reason of 
this strange peculiarity we are quite unable to con- 
jecture. The ai is generally a silent animal, but an 
individual in captivity is recorded to have emitted, when 
pulled away from a branch to which it was clinging, a 
shrill note like that of some monkeys. The teeth of the 
sloths are exceedingly simple in form, and there are none 
whatever in the front of the mouth. There are usually 
but five above and four below on each side, and only 
in the unau is each first tooth prolonged beyond the 
others. The stomach of these leaf-eating animals 
is complex, reminding us of that of ruminating 
animals. 

The windpipe of the ai does not pass straight down- 
wards and backwards to the lungs as it does in all other 
mammals. It is folded on itself in a coil as is often the 
case in birds and reptiles. 

Such are the main points which may here be men- 
tioned, with respect to the structure, appearance, and 
habit of these South American beasts ; but what, after 
all, are sloths ? They have sometimes been supposed to 
be distant relations of the monkeys. They were for a 
time thought to be so by the great Linnaeus, and the 
modern distinguished French naturalist, De Blainville, 
also so considered them. With their round heads and 
long arms they may be said to possess a certain resem- 
blance to some of the apes, but such resemblance is 



254 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

indeed of the most superficial kind. Most naturalists 
have associated them with two other groups of animals 
which are also exclusively American, namely, the ant- 
eaters and armadillos, and these again with certain Old 
World ant-eaters, namely, with those known as pango- 
lins (or the manis), and that called the Cape ant-eater, 
earth pig or aard-vark of the Dutch Boers. The 
whole of these form one order of beasts called " Eden- 
tata," because they have either no teeth, or at least 
none in the front of the mouth, while their teeth, even 
Fig. 69. 




THE GREAT ANT-EATER. 



if numerous, are of a peculiarly simple structure, save in 
the aard-vark, in which they are complex, but complex 
in a way found in no other kind of beast whatever. 

Thus the edentate order of beasts may be taken as 
a group parallel to the other orders of mammals, such 
as those of the apes, bats, carnivores, hoofed-beasts, 
whales, and porpoises, rodents, and insect-eating beasts, 
respectively. 

Of the American ant-eaters there are three very dis- 
tinct kinds, and they are singularly different in appearance 
and habits from the sloths. The j^reat ant-eater stands 



THE SLOTH 255 

two feet higli at the shoulders, has a very long and bushy 
tail, and measures four feet from its root to the end of 
the snout. 

Nothing could well be more unlike the head of a sloth, 
than is the head of the ant-eater, which is drawn out into 
an exceedingly long and slender snout with a small mouth, 
which opens at its extremity only so far as to allow a very 
long worm-like tongue to be protruded from it. The 
animal is to be found far and wide, though it is nowhere 
plentiful, in the tropical parts of South and Central 
America, in damp forests and the vicinity of rivers and 
swamps. It has claws on its fingers save the fifth, but 
that of the middle finger is extremely large and strong. 
It uses its claws to open the nests of white ants, or ter- 
mites. Then as the insects rush out when their nest is 
broken into, the ant-eater rapidly introduces its long 
tongue amongst them, to which they adhere, because it 
is coated with a very glutinous saliva, secreted by enor- 
mous spittle-glands. The tongue is sent forth and drawn 
back with great celerity, and thus the animal is enabled 
to obtain a great quantity of the small creatures, which 
constitute its main food in a state of nature. It is 
entirely toothless, but has a strong muscular stomach, 
like the gizzard of a bird. In captivity, it will eat bread 
and milk, also blood and newly-born rats. It does not 
climb nor does it burrow, its claws being only used for 
tearing down ant's nests, and for defence, in which 
latter action it can use them very eifectively. When 
not attacked, it is, however, an inoffensive animal. It 
has but a single young one at a birth. 

The middle-sized ant-eater, or tamandua, has the 
characters of the larger one less developed, but its tail is 
not at all bushy, and it can climb trees. The third and 
smallest ant-eater is entirely arboreal, of a yellow colour 



256 



TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



and about the size of a rat. It is called the two-toed 
ant-eater, because it is only the second and middle fingers 
which have claws. Like the tamandua it is only found 
in the forests of Central and South America. 



Fig 70. 




THE SMALLEST ANT-EATER. 

The ant-eaters are different indeed in aspect from the 
sloths, but the next group, the armadillos, are still more 
divergent. 

They are amongst beasts what tortoises are amongst 
reptiles ; inasmuch as a large part of their skin is ossi- 



THE SLOTH 257 

fied, that is, changed into a true bony substance which 
is everywhere externally invested by horny scales. 
Almost always this external structure consists of a 
solid shield on the head, one over the shoulders, and one 
over the hinder portion of the body ; the back and sides 
— between the shoulders and hinder plates — being in- 
vested by transverse solid bands (the number of which 
varies with the species), which are connected with each 
other by soft, flexible skin, so as to allow the body to be 
bent, and indeed, sometimes to be rolled up into a ball, 
the soft ventral surface of the body being by this means 
concealed, and the hard solid coat presented against 
attack on every side. 

Armadillos are small or moderate-sized animals, which 
are mostly nocturnal, and feed on both animal and vege- 
table substances; eating insects, worms, reptiles, roots, 
and carrion. They are powerful and rapid burrowers, 
by which faculty alone they can escape their enemies, for 
they are not only harmless but defenceless — save as 
regards their armour — and offer no resistance when 
caught. As to them, Darwin tells us in his journal 
during the voyage of the Beagle : 

" In the course of a day's ride near Bahia Blanca, 
several armadillos were generally met with. The instant 
one was perceived, it was necessary, in order to catch it, 
almost to tumble off one's horse : for in soft soil the animal 
burrowed so quickly, that its hind quarters would almost 
disappear before one could alight. It seems almost a 
pity to kill such nice little animals, for, as a Gaucho said, 
while sharpening his knife on the back of one, ' Son tan 
mansos ' (they are so quiet)." 

Most of the species, however, are prized as food. 
In order to burrow, it is necessary that they should 
move their fore limbs rapidly, and with much force. It 

R 



258 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

is therefore necessary that the muscles of the chest 
should be largely developed, and in order that there 
should be more space for such muscles, the breast develops 
a keel, as it also does in the mole and in bats, and to a 
very much greater extent, in birds — as every one who has 
carved a fowl must know. 

The largest of the armadillos — the priodon — measures 
a yard from snout to tail root, and the tail itself is twenty 
inches long. It is found in the forests of Surinam and 
Brazil, and has very powerful claws. It is accused of 
burrowing in graveyards and feeding on dead bodies, but 
Fig. 71. 




THE APAR ARMADDILLO. 

it lives principally on white ants and other insects. It 
has no less than from twelve to thirteen movable bands 
interposed between its anterior and posterior body-shields. 
Another kind known as the apar has but three movable 
bands, but it can roll itself up very perfectly. Darwin 
tells us : 

" It has the power of rolling itself up into a perfect 
sphere, like one kind of English woodlouse. In this 
state it is safe from the attack of dogs, for the dog not 
being able to take the whole in its mouth, tries to bite 
one side, and the ball slips away. The smooth, hard 
covering offers a better defence than the sharp spines of 
the hedgehog." 



THE SLOTH 259 

Armadillos dwell in the open plains and also in the 
forests of South America, but one kind, the peba or nine- 
banded armadillo, ranges from Paraguay to Texas. The 
commonest kind is the six-banded armadillo, or encou- 
berfc, which inhabits Brazil and Paraguay, and allied 
forms, more or less hairy, are found south of the Bio 
de la Plata, and another still more hairy species is found 
in Peru. 

A small, very rare, and peculiar kind, is the pichiciago, 
of which one variety is found in the Argentine Republic, 
and another in Bolivia. Its bony plates are very thin 
and delicate, and form no solid shield over either the 
shoulders or the haunches. The horny covering of the 
Argentine species is of a pinkish colour, and the animal 
has snow-white, silky hair. 

All the armadillos have simple teeth, and the number 
on each side of either jaw may vary from seven to five- 
and-twenty. 

Yery different from the armadillos of America, are the 
pangolins of the Old "World, although they also are pro- 
tected by a dense and strong external armature. Their 
skin, however, contains no bony plates ; their body being 
covered and protected, except on its under surface, by 
large, close-set, horny, over-lapping scales, amongst which 
grow a few hairs. Indeed, the scales themselves— strong 
and dense as they are, with sharp cutting edges — are 
really composed of hairs cemented together. The limbs 
are short, but the tail is moderately, or greatly, elongated 
according to the species, of which there are some seven 
kinds. One African Lind, appropriately called the long- 
tailed manis, has a greater number of bones in its tail 
than has any othet beasts — namely forty-nine. Pangolins 
can roll themselves up into a ball, when the sharp edges 
of their scales standing more or less out on all sides, 



26o TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

effectually protect them from attack. They feed, as do 
the ant-eaters of the New World; and their jaws are 
equally toothless, while their fore-paws are furnished 
with powerful claws, especially that of the middle finger. 
They both climb and burrow, sometimes forming a 
chamber six feet wide, four yards beneath the surface of 
the soil; the size of course depends on the size of the 
species, and they vary from one foot to five feet in length. 
They are said to live in pairs, and have one or two young 
at a birth. The only sound they give forth is a hiss, and 
Fig. 72. 




THE LONG-TAILED PANGOLIN. 

this, together with their scaly exterior, naturally led to 
their being considered to be reptiles^ some kind of lizard. 
They are found in China, India, and the Malay Archi- 
pelago, and Africa south of the Sahara. No species is 
now common to both Asia and Africa, though in quite 
recent geological times, a form now African, existed at 
Madras. At an earlier date a species dwelt in South- 
eastern Europe, which was three times the size of any 
species now living. 

Mr. Fraser, the African travelling zoologist, gives * us 
some details as to the habits- of an animal of this kind. 
He says : 

" During my short residence at Fernando Po, I suc- 
* In his " Zoologica Typica." ' 



THE SLOTH 261 

ceeded in procuring two living specimens of this animal. 
The individuals were evidently not adult : the largest 
measuring thirty inches in length, of which the head 
and body were twelve inches and the tail eighteen 
inches. I kept them alive for about a week at Fernando 
Po, and allowed them the range of a room, where they 
fed upon a small black ant, which is very abundant and 
troublesome in the houses and elsewhere. Even when 
first procured they displayed little or no fear, but continued 
to climb about the room without noticing my occasional 
entrance. They would climb up the somewhat roughly 
hewn square posts which supported the building with 
great facility, and upon reaching the ceiling would return 
head foremost ; sometimes they would roll themselves 
u^p into a ball and throw themselves down, and appar- 
ently without experiencing any inconvenience from the 
fall, which was in a measure broken upon reaching the 
ground by the semi-yielding scales, which were thrown 
into an erect position by the curve of the body of the 
animal. In climbing, the tail, with its strongly pointed 
scales beneath, was used to assist the feet, and the 
grasp of the hind feet, assisted by the tail, was so 
powerful, that the animal would throw the body back 
(when on the post) into a horizontal position, and 
sway itself to and fro, apparently taking pleasure in 
this kind of exercise. It always slept with the body 
rolled up, and when in this position in a corner of the 
building, owing to the position and strength of the 
scales, and the power of the limbs combined, I found it 
impossible to remove the animal against its will, the 
points of the scales being inserted into every little notch 
and hollow of the surrounding objects. The eyes are 
very dark and hazel and very prominent. The colonial 
name for this species of manis is ' Attadillo,' and it is 
called by the natives of the island ' Gahlah.' The flesh 
is said to be exceedingly good eating, and it is in great 
request among the natives." 

The American ant-eater we found to be very unlike 
sloths, and the armadillos are still more unlike them. 
The pangolins would seem fully as unlike them as the 



262 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

armadillos, and, nevertheless, there is one very strange 
character present in some pangolins, which forcibly brings 
the sloths to mind. We have already called attention 
to the very remarkable fact that sloths differ from all 
other beasts save two, in that they have neck-bones 
which may be as few as six, or as many as nine instead 
of being of the sabbatical number, seven, as they are in 
mammals, with both the longest and the shortest necks. 
Now, it has been of late years discovered that in some 
pangolins there are eight bones in the neck. If there it 
no really exceptional affinity between the pangolins and 
sloths, the fact, that they thus agree to differ from all 
other beasts (save one) and man, in the number of their 
neck-bones, is a very interesting one. 

That it may be a mere coincidence is, however, ren- 
dered less improbable by the fact, that the only other 
creature which exhibits a divergence from the normal 
condition of beasts, as to this character, is the manatee, 
an aquatic animal which certainly has no special rela- 
tionship to either sloths or pangolins. 

The last group of that order of animals in which the 
sloth is classed consists but of two species of earth-pig, 
or aard-vark, one of which inhabits South Africa, while 
the other is to be found in North-east Africa, including 
Egypt. In tertiary times, a species also existed in what 
is now the Island of Samos in the Turkish Archipelago 
These creatures diflfer greatly from other edentates, 
while in the structure of their teeth they diverge in the 
most remarkable manner from every known mammal, 
and approximate to certain fishes. 

The earth-pig has at first sight a rough resemblance 
to a large hog. It is scantily covered with bristle-like 
hairs, has a long snout, the end of which is very mobile, 
and with terminal nostrils, long ears, rather short limbs, 



THE SLOTH 



263 



and a long tail. It measures about three and a half 
feet from the root of the tail to the end of the snout ; 
the tail is a foot and three-quarters long, and is very 
thick at the base, but tapering towards the point. There 
are four toes to each fore-foot and five to each hind-foot, 
all provided with large strong claws, flattened horizon- 
tally and hollowed out underneath. The tongue is thick 
and fleshy, and much less vermiform than that of the 
ant-eater and pangolins ; but the spittle-glands are still, 
Fig. 73. 




THE AARD VARK, 

as in them, largely developed. It used to be an extremely 
common animal in South Africa, though from its noc- 
turnal habits and timidity it was never frequently seen. 
It feeds on white ants almost exclusively, so that when 
these insects are very abundant, the presence of an 
aard-vark may be anticipated. 

The termites raise mounds of an elliptical fig are to 
tlie height of three or four feet above the surface of the 
ground ; and so numerous are these gigantic ant-hills in 
some part of South Africa, that they may be seen to 



264 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

extend over a plain as far as the eye can reach, and so 
close together that a waggon may have a difficulty in 
passing between them. From the action of the sun, 
these nests become exceedingly hard on the surface. It 
is in the neighbourhood of such nests that the aard-vark 
makes a deep burrow, in which it sleeps during the day, 
and it burrows with such extreme ease and celerity, 
that it is said to be a hopeless task to try and dig the 
animal out, while it is so strong that if caught it takes 
two or three men to drag it out of its burrow. At night 
it goes out to one of the nearest ants' nests, and scratches 
a hole in the side of it big enough to admit its snout, 
and then rests, quietly inserting its tongue again and again 
into the aperture it has made, withdrawing it each time 
covered with ants which have flown out to defend their 
dwelling, and have been caught by the sticky saliva 
with which its tongue is coated. It becomes very 
fat, and its flesh is esteemed both wholesome and palat- 
able, the hind quarters, cut into hams and dried, being 
especially relished. It may seem strange that so bulky 
an animal should get fat on such food. But termites 
are practically infinite in number in the tropics, and may 
attain a length of from one inch to one inch and a half. 
Their bodies also are soft and unctuous, and are often 
collected and eaten by the natives of Africa. The 
traveller, Paterson, affirmed that only prejudice pre- 
vented Europeans from making a similar use of them, 
and declared that in his different journeys, he was often 
under the necessity of eating them, and that he found 
them far from disagreeable, while farmers collect them 
by bushels, for the purpose of feeding poultry. 

It is difficult to detect any relation between such food 
and even the external form of the teeth of the aard- 
vark, and absolutely impossible so to explain their struc- 



THE SL>OTH 265 

tare. One does not see why the creature should require 
teeth any more than the pangolins and ant-eaters which 
also feed on termites. 

There are usually five teeth on either side of each jaw, 
simple in shape, with crowns, which at first are rounded, 
but soon wear flat. Careful inspection of the worn 
surface shows a number of smair holes which are the 
apertures of as many canals, and the tooth seems to have 
the structure of a cane. In fact, however, each tooth, 
though apparently simple, is really composed of a closely 
set bundle of very fine, long, cylindrical teeth, united 
together side by side. As the reader no doubt knows, 
each of our own teeth has a soft centre, known as 
the "pulp," by the hardening of the outer part of 
which each tooth has been formed. The very fine 
canals, which run through the substance of each tooth 
of the aard-vark, are the cavities for such pulp of the 
various very long and slender teeth, by the fusion of 
which each apparently single tooth is formed. Such a 
structure exists in no other beast, and even in no other 
reptile ; but, strange to say, the same thing is found in a 
fish of the skate kind, known in science as " Myliohatis.^^ 
Yet the aard-vark can have no special relationship of 
generic affinity with these fishes. 

It would be impossible to find a stronger instance of 
that circumstance on which, in our previous articles, we 
have so often insisted, namely, the independent origin of 
similar structures. 

Such are the beasts that live on the earth's surface 
to-day, and compose the singular, and singularly di- 
versified, order of Edentates. 

Outside that order, we have already met* with two 
animals which have been supposed to be therewith 
* See pp. 49 and 50. 



266 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

allied ; though the resemblance is but an external one* 
and, so far as it goes, yet farther illustrates the doctrine 
of the independent origin of similar structures. These 
two animals are the echidna and the native sloth. The 
echidna has the powerful claws, the long snout, the 
vermiform tongue, and the copious spittle-glands, fitted 
for a creature which is by habit an ant-eater. Neverthe- 
less, in essential structure, it is poles asunder from the 
true ant-eaters : for as we saw in our article " The 
Opossum," the echidna and platypus together constitute 
the most aberrant of all the groups which compose the 
class of beasts, namely, the group known as " Ornitho- 
delphous mammals," which form a sub-class by them- 
selves. 

Similarly, the native sloth, or koala, is a creature 
which resembles the true sloth, because it also is formed 
to pass the greater part of its life clinging to the 
branches of trees. It lives on the tender shoots of trees 
and on leaves, and has a round head, long claws and 
short tail, and it is also very tenacious of life, and even 
when severely wounded will not quit its hold of the 
branch to which it may be clinging. But however many 
superficial points of resemblance the koala may have to a 
sloth, it is a most difierent kind of animal, for as we 
have seen, it belongs to the sub-order of pouched-beasts, 
or Marsupials ; while the sloths are what we ourselves 
are, namely, Monodelphous mammals. Therefore, what- 
ever structural resemblance may exist either between 
the echidna and the ant-eater, or between the koala and 
the sloth, must be resemblances which have been 
induced — arisen independently — and have never been 
inherited from a common ancestor. 

But if the sloth has no aflinity to any animals outside 
the Edentate order, has it any special affinity to any of 



THE SLOTH 267 

the other animals within it? Of the ant-eaters, arma- 
dillos, pangolins, and aard-varks, which group is the 
least divergent from the sloth — an animal apparently so 
different from them all ? 

As we have seen, that most exceptional character, a 
divergence from the number seven in the bones of the 
neck, would seem to connect the pangolins with the 
sloths. But the resemblance is an absolutely isolated 
one, and is accompanied by a great number of differ- 
ences, not the least important of which is the geo- 
graphical difference, since they respectively inhabit the 
old and the new worlds only. 

The aard-vark in various points, but above all in tooth 
structure, is so divergent from all other Edentates, that 
it is quite impossible to recognise in it a creature with 
any special relationship to the sloth. It again also 
differs from the latter, in being an inhabitant of the 
east side of the Atlantic. 

Armadillos, like sloths, are exclusively American 
creatures, and they have simple teeth, whereas the 
ant-eaters differ from the sloths in having none. But, 
with this exception, it is impossible to detect any special 
resemblance between these beasts, essentially terrestrial, 
and burrowing and clothed in bony armour, and the 
arboreal sloths, clothed with their coarse hair. 

There only remain, then, the ant-eaters wherewith to 
compare the sloths, and they are different from them 
indeed. As before said, nothing could well be more 
different from the round-headed and tooth-provided 
sloths, than the very long-snouted edentulous ant-eaters. 
The existing ant-eaters, then, afford us no clue whatever 
to any relationship which may exist between the sloth 
and any animal which is not a sloth. We must therefore 
turn to those organic records of the past^ which remain, 



268 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

in order to see if there we can find evidences such as do 
not exist in the living world, to guide us in our quest. 

In the first place, it may be mentioned that, in the 
latest tertiary cavern- deposits of Brazil, and in the 
vicinity of Buenos Ayres, remains have been found of an 
enormous kind of armadillo, which differed greatly from 
all existing armadillos. Its bony coat was entire, 
reaching from the neck to the root of the tail, "without 
the interposition of even a single movable band ; the tail 
was also enclosed in a strong bony sheath. Many 
varieties of these animals, known as Glyptodons, once 
existed, and some have left their r^emains not only in 
Mexico, but also in Texas. But though these animals 
diverge in structure fiom existing armadillos, they do 
not diverge from them in the direction of the sloth, but 
rather in carrying to a still higher degree the characters 
of the armadillo type. This makes them especially 
interesting, because, as a rule, the animals which are 
most recent are most specialised, while earlier forms are 
more generalised in their organisation. Such was by no 
means, however, invariably the case, and we have a 
remarkable instance to the contrary, in the sabre-toothed 
tigers, which, as is shown in our article on the racoon — ■ 
carried the carnivorous organisation to a higher degree of 
specialisation and perfection than do any tigers, lions, or 
other members of the cat-tribe which exist in our own 
day. Not only, indeed, did these ancient armadillos 
have a shell or carapace in one solid piece, but the back- 
bone, instead of consisting of a series of distinct bones 
(vertebrae) separated by joints, had their vertebrae almost 
entirely fixed together into one solid bony tube, con- 
taining the spinal marrow, with one complex joint at the 
base of the neck to allow of the head being withdrawn 
within the shelter of the carapace. 



i 



THE SLOTH 269 

It is a singular thing that an animal so strangely- 
built, and which could, one would think, defy the 
attacks of almost any and every enemy, should have 
become extinct. 

But if the glyptodons fail to offer us any indication of 
the line of descent along which the sloths have travelled, 
such is not the case with another most singular and 
important group of animals, which have scattered their 
huge remains broadcast over both North and South 
America. 

In that, politically, most eventful year, 1789, there 
arrived at the Royal Museum, in Madrid, an almost 
perfect skeleton of a huge beast, the bones of which had 
been found on the banks of the river Luxan, near 
Buenos Ayres. The creature was of vast bulk, exceeding 
in size every existing land-animal except the elephant? 
and had its limbs been larger it would have surpassed 
even the dimensions of the elephant. It measured full 
thirteen feet from the front of the head to the end of the 
tail, and it had a very strong tail, which was itself five feet 
long. It inhabited those lands, the waters of which run 
into the Hio de la Plata ; and similar forms have been 
found in South Carolina and Georgia. The animal ia 
known as the Megatherium, and strange to say, in spite 
of its immense bulk, and in spite of its having been 
organised for walking on the ground, it was so like the 
subject of this paper, th<it it was called a ground-sloth. 
Such is especially the case with respect to certain points 
in the formation of the skull, the shoulder-blade, and the 
haunch bones. The fore-limbs were larger than the 
hind-limbs, and had three immense claws attached to iU 
three middle digits, while there appears to have been but a 
single large claw in the hind foot, which claw was 
attached to the third toe. It seems to have walked on 



270 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

the outer sides of its hands and feet, and so the claws 
were not in contact with the ground, and thus could be 
kept sharp. Its teeth were essentially like those of the 
sloths, but rather more complicated, so that it probably 
ground up and devoured the smaller branches of trees, as 
well as their leaves and tender shoots. Another some- 
what smaller South American beast, now extinct, is 
known as the Mylodon, of which there were a number of 
large varieties, while the remains of allied creatures have 
also been discovered in America, and are known as the 
Scelidotherium Megalonyx and the Nothrotherium, and 
these were all intermediate in structure between the 
existing sloths and ant-eaters, having the head and teeth 
of the former, with the trunk, and, in some respects, the 
limbs of the latter. Much speculation has taken place, 
as to how such huge creatures as the megatherium and 
mylodon could have succeeded in browsing on the leaves 
of trees, which, one would think, must have been com- 
pletely out of their reach. It was at one time thought 
by some persons that they, like the sloths, actually 
climbed trees, and lived in the branches, and the sugges- 
tion was made, that, in their day, trees gigantic enough 
to have been in proportion to their size, might have 
existed. But there is no need for so wild an hypo- 
thesis, in favour of which no fragment of evidence 
exists. Doubtless their bulk enabled them to reach the 
lower branches of many trees, when the fore part of the 
body was raised and supported on the massive hind 
quarters. Then their great hook-like claws, at the end 
of their rather long and more or less prehensile fore- 
limbs, were no doubt very efficient organs for tearing 
down branches and cutting or breaking off smaller por- 
tions. But Sir Richard Owen has suggested yet another 
mode by which they might have obtained their leafy 



THE SLOTH 271 

food still more abundantly. The development of the 
bones of their limbs makes it evident that those limbs 
were clothed with prodigiously voluminous, and therefore 
very powerful, muscles. This fact is shown by the 
huge ridges, and other prominences which stand 
out from the bones, and served to afford additional 
surface for the attachment of such vast muscles. The 
great haunch bones tell the same story, and the tail itself 
must have been a most powerful organ, if not for active 
movement, yet for most efficient support. Activity was 
doubtless no attribute of these huge beasts, which had 
nothing to fear from any enemy. Probably their move- 
ments were little, if at all, more rapid than are the 
movements of the sloth in our own day. But speed was 
not required for the mode of procuring food, which, the 
venerable naturalist Owen has suggested. According 
to him, these creatures raised themselves nearly erect, 
supporting their ponderous body upon their two bulky 
hind limbs, and their very powerful tail, as on a tripod. 
Then with their strong fore -arms, they embraced the 
trunk of some moderate-sized tree, and proceeded to 
sway it to and fro, till they succeeded in prostrating it. 
Thus they would be provided with an ample repast, and 
their great cutting claws would be most useful for tearing 
down, or breaking off, those branches of the prostrate 
tree which were out of their reach, without such action 
on their part. The single great hooked claw attached to 
each hind foot was no doubt of great use to them, by 
giving them a much better and more secure hold on the 
ground, while struggling to uproot a tree, than they 
would have had without it. 

We may now attempt to answer the question, " What 
is a sloth ? " in the light afforded us by our brief review 
of those forms living and extinct, which naturalists 



272 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

have grouped in the same order with it— the order 
Edentata. 

Of its five groups (i) sloths ; (2) ant-eaters ; (3) arma- 
dillos; (4) pangolins and (5) aard-varks, the fifth and 
last stands wide apart from the other four, and shows no 
sign of real relationship with any one of them. The 
aard-vark is placed with the other edentates rather 
because naturalists do not know in what other order to 
put it, and shrink from erecting it into an order by itself. 

The pangolins also show little affinity to the first 
three groups. We have seen how even an animal, of so 
fundamentally distinct a nature as the echidna, may 
nevertheless present us with ant-eater-like characters, 
which cannot have been due to inheritance, but must have 
arisen independently. The ant-eater-like character of 
the pangolins,, then, may also have arisen independently. 
Nevertheless, the very singular fact, that the bones of the 
neck have a tendency to diverge from the number almost 
universal in the class of mammals, seems to indicate a 
possibly deep-seated affinity between them and the 
sloths which present that abnormal character in a yet 
more marked degree. Nevertheless, we can only speak 
of it as a "possibly deep-seated affinity," because, as 
before said, we find similar abnormality in the manatee, 
which can hardly be supposed to have any exceptional 
affinity with either the sloth or the pangolins. 

Tbe armadillos do show some evident marks of 
affinity to the ant-eaters, especially in the structure of 
the lumbar region of their backbone. Nevertheless, in 
their external defensive armature, they difier widely from 
them, and from every other kind of beast whatsoever. 
Moreover, the most ancient form of the group yet known 
to us — the glyptodons — were even more exceptional 
in structure than those which exist to-day. 



THE SLOTH 273 

In that extersive group of huge creatures which, 
since it contains the megatherium and all creatures like 
it, may be spoken of as the group of " Megatherioids," we 
find animals which, at one and the same time, resemble 
both ant-eaters and sloths. On the principles of evolu- 
tion then we may regard them as at least nearly allied 
to that parent form in which both sloths and ant-eaters 
had their first origin. From some more or less mega- 
therium-like animals there was gradually evolved a 
creature on the way to elongate its snout and tongue, 
lose its teeth, augment its tail, and live on animal food. 
From such a form there must also have been gradually 
evolved some creature on the way to dwindle strangely 
in size, to shorten its tail, to simplify its teeth, to 
elongate its arms, and to diminish the number of its toes, 
which grew more and more rigid as the animal's race 
took more and more to climb up the trees, no single 
branch of which it could any longer hope to be able to 
pull down. Meantime the troops of great megatherioid 
animals fell off in numbers, and finally disappeared 
from the earth's surface (as the glyptodons have also 
done) and in an as yet quite inexplicable manner, leaving 
in their place the groups of smaller creatures, different 
indeed as to size, but more exceptionally and specially 
diversified in structure, than were the gigantic ancestors 
from which they may boast to have sprung. 

A sloth then is the animal of all beasts the most 
exclusively organised to dwell in trees and live upon 
their foliage. It is one of the last evolved of a group of 
beasts, the most remote and unknown ancestors of which 
may have given o]'igin to the pangolins and possibly also 
the aard-vark. Other unknown ancestors less remote 
were the source whence sprang the parents of the 
armadillos on the one hand, and the megatherioids on 



274 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

the other : such megatheriods being the only yet known 
representatives of the parents of both the sloths and 
also of the ant-eaters, which we thus know to be the 
nearest allies of, although wonderfully different in habits 
from, that most exceptional and at first most misunder- 
stood animal, the sloth. 



X 

THE SEA-LION 

The sea-lion is a beast the sight of which must be 
familiar to very many Americans, for it can hardly 
remain long unknown by any visitor to San Francisco. 
It is also a creature well worthy of notice in itself, since, 
interesting as sea-lions are from their habits, they are 
also remarkable as regards their structure. 

A sea-lion is a marine mammal and a true quadruped, 
all the four limbs of which are modified to suit its 
eminently aquatic Hfe. It has a moderately rounded 
head with large eyes, very small but quite distinct 
external ears, a longish neck, a long tapering body, and 
a very short tail. It lias six small cutting teeth above, 
and four below in the front of the mouth, and external 
to them, on either side, is a large eye-tooth, or *' canine," 
which is conical, pointed, and recurved. Behind these 
there are, on each side of the mouth, five or six grinders 
above and five below ; each of which has a crown with 
three conical prominences, whereof the medium one is 
very much the largest. In the fore -limb the parts which 
answer to our upper arm and our fore-arm are exceedingly 
short, but the hand is very much elongated, with five 
fingers, which are all enclosed in one fold of skin, forming 
a fin, the separate elements of which are not visible ex- 
ternally. Indeed, the fold of skin which encloses the 
fingers extends much beyond their respective tips. Of 



276 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

the five fingers included within it, the little finger is by 
far the smallest, and thence they increase in length to the 
thumb, which lies in the same plane as the others, but 
is much the longest and the largest of them all. In the 
foot, the digit which answers to our great toe is also the 
longest and strongest one, but the other four are nearly 
equal in length to each other and to it — decreasing from 
the second to the fifth digit, very much less rapidly than 
do the corresponding digits of the hand. The five digits 
of the foot seem at the first glance to be much less com- 
pletely involved in a common fold of skin than do those of 
the hand ; but in fact they are all thus included to beyond 
their tips. The deceptive appearance of distinctness is 
due to the fold of integument which extends beyond 
them, being drawn out into five long processes of skin, 
one opposite the tip of each toe. The nails on the dorsal 
surface of each extremity mark the end of the respective 
digits. These nails are mere rounded rudiments, save in 
the three middle fingers of each hind-foot, each of which 
has an elongated, compressed, and curved claw. 

The length of the animal from the nose to the root of 
the tail is often above six and a half feet ; the tail is five 
and a half inches. The fore-limb measures about two and 
a half feet, and the hind-limb two and a quarter. Some- 
times the animal may be a little over eight feet from the 
snout to the end of the tail. 

The colour varies from chestnut -brown to blackish- 
brown, and there are long yellowish-white whiskers on 
either side of the muzzle. 

The creature is a vivacious, active animal, even on 
land, and wonderfully graceful and quick in its move- 
ments in water, where its four limbs act simply as fins. 
On land it walks on all-fours, with the palmar surface of 
its hands and the plantar surface of its feet on the 



THE SEA-LION 



277 



ground. Then the digits of the hand are directed back- 
wards, while those of the hind-foot are turned forwards. 
The two hind-limbs, however, are bound together by the 
skin almost down to the ankles, and so, in walking, that 
part of the body presents a singularly constrained and 
awkward appearance. 

We have said that the sea-lion can hardly be unknown 
by any visitor to San Francisco, and such is indeed 
the case, for their destruction has been for some time 
Fig. 74. 




THE CALIFORNIAN SEA-LION. 

forbidden, and a view of them (through a telescope) 
disporting themselves on some adjacent rocks, is one of 
the sights shown to those who come for the first time to 
the City of the Golden Gate. 

During the last twenty years the animal has become 
well known even in Europe, and has been shown at the 
Central Park Menagerie, New York, and the Zoological 
Gardens of Philadelphia and Cincinnati. It has also 
been exhibited by the late Mr. P. T. Barnum. A sea- 
lion, though of a different variety, was first brought to 
the Zoological Society's Garden, in London, in 1866. It 



278 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

had been captured near Cape Horn in 1862, by a French 
sailor, who had taught it a great variety of tricks, 
which he made it pky before admiring crowds in the 
London Gardens, where he had the care of it for 
several years. Two pairs of the Californian variety of 
sea -lions arrived in England in 1877, and various 
others have been received here and there on the Conti- 
nent of Europe. 

The animal which has thus become so familiar to us 
was, it seems, first made known by Captain William 
Dampier, who, in 1729, pubhshed his narrative of " A 
New Voyage Round the World," wherein is an account 
of observations on the sea-hon made by him in 1683. 

The Californian sea-lion is distinguishable from other 
varieties by the marked angle which the forehead forms 
with the muzzle. It ranges the coast of California from 
San Diego and San Nicolas Island, to the Bay of St. 
Francisco. 

The Northern or Steller's sea-lion, a creature about 
ten feet in length, inhabits the North Pacific. The 
Southern or Patagonian sea-lion comes from the Falkland 
Islands and Patagonia. A small kind of sea-lion is found 
at the Cape of Good Hope, while yet another variety, 
Forster's sea-lion, frequents the coast of Australia and 
various islands of the Southern Ocean, and has a delicate 
fur. Another kind, which yields the soft fur known 
by ladies as *' sealskin," is often distinguished as the 
*' sea-bear." It is an inhabitant of those tiny islands, 
St. George and St. Paul, which are two of the Prybilofi" 
group of islands, whence its skins are imported in 
immense numbers. 

These islands are toward the east end of Behring's 
Sea, but individuals are also to be met with in Behring's 
and Copper Islands, at the west end of Behring's Sea. 



4 



THE SEA-LION 279 

The Southern or Patagonian sea-lion was, in 1868, 
according to Captain Abbott, very common on the Falk- 
land Islands, where it bred and was little disturbed by 
sealing boats. 

*' There is a remarkable disparity," he tells us,* " be- 
tween the male and female of this variety. The male is as 
large as a bullock in circumference, while the female is 
no bigger than a calf. At one time only the female was 
killed by the sealers, as the skin of the male was con- 
sidered to be of little value ; and this may account for the 

preponderance of males which I here observed I 

recollect on one occasion, accompanied by a friend, rolling 
stones down from above on some that were lying on the 
beach. When one was hit, he gave a roar and rushed 
at his nearest companion, fancying no doubt that he had 
attacked him ; others swallowed the stones thrown at 

them Although these animals are so unwieldy 

in appearance, they have wonderful powers of climbing, 
chiefly by means of their flippers, and can ascend rocks 
that are almost perpendicular. I recollect once watching 
a number of seals from the top of a very steep ledge of 
rock about twenty feet high, when upon hearing our 
voices, a large sea-lion gave a sudden roar and rushed 
up the rock where I was sitting. I fancy that it was on 
account of a female companion near him that he miule 
this attack, as among about fifteen males, there appe'U'(td 
to be only two females." 

Forster's sea-lion seems to have been seen by Captain 
Cook off the north part of New Zealand, in January 
1770, and later on he saw the largest animal of the kind 
he had ever beheld. It was swimming on the surface of 
the water and suffered its pursuers to come near enough 
to fire at it, but after an hour's chase it got clear away. 

The sea-lions and sea-bears, both known by the common 
term of " Eared-seals," are almost wholly confined to 

* *' Proceedings of the Zoological Society, 1868," p. 191. 



28o TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

temperate and cold latitudes, the different varieties being 
found in the localities before indicated. Most of them 
are clothed only with coarse, hard, stiff hair, varying in 
length with age and the season of the year, and being 
wholly devoid of soft under-fur. But the sea-bear of the 
Prybiloff Islands and the southern sea-bear have, as 
before said, an abundant soft, silky under-fur, which 
gives to the skins, especially of the females and young 
males, great value as articles of commerce. In these 
precious skins^ the longer, coarser over-hair also varies in 
length and abundance according to age and the season 
of the year. 

There is generally a wonderful disparity in size between 
the sexes, similar to that noticed by Abbott in the Pata- 
gonian variety. Adult males may weigh three, and 
sometimes five times as much as do the females. They 
are all greedy devourers of fish, which their sharp-pointed, 
trident-shaped, grinding, or molar, teeth enable them to 
catch and retain easily. In confinement they will eat a 
prodigious quantity of fish, and readily learn to catch 
them in the air when they are thrown to them, as also 
to climb into and perch themselves on chairs, and to play 
a number of amusing tricks, the acquisition of which 
shows that they possess considerable intelligence as well 
as docility. 

It is, however, very surprising that, in spite of their 
voracity, the males at least will, at certain seasons, remain 
for almost an incredible period without food, although at 
the very time they may be exerting great combative 
energy. This is connected with their breeding habits, 
which are very singular and remarkable. They are 
gregarious and polygamous animals, which associate 
together in vast troops. 

Nevertheless, the troops are largely composed of 



THE SEA-LION 281 

separate families, each under one powerful male who 
governs it. The places where these animals congregate 
are popularly known as " rookeries." When the breed- 
ing season approaches, the adult or old males come first 
to the rookery, and landing, each takes up his station on 
the rocks close to the sea, there to await the arrival of 
the females. But their respective stations are not taken 
up without severe contests, the most powerful males 
securing advantageous positions close to the sea, while 
those which have not reached their prime or which have 
survived it, are driven further inland. They fight des- 
perately, and sometimes a male will have to carry on fifty 
or sixty successive contests before his position on the 
shore-line is fully secured to him. When the males 
arrive they are strong, vigorous, and exceedingly fat, and 
the successful ones secure a space for themselves about 
ten feet square. They begin to arrive in the latter part 
of May, and a little before the middle of June the first 
females approach the shore. This is the signal for a 
universal and desperate fight amongst the males. Each 
successful combatant then tries to coax or to force a 
female to land at his station, where she is immediately 
looked after with the most vigilant jealousy by her lord 
till he sees another female approaching, when he goes to . 
the water's edge to similarly coax or force her. Then 
comes the opportunity for one of the males less favour- 
ably situated to appropriate to himself the female thus 
momentarily left unguarded. She is seized and deposited 
on his ground, but hardly is this accomplished before he 
has in turn to defend his conquest against the attempts 
of other males whose stations are still further back. 
Should any of them succeed, they in their turn have to 
combat for their prize, till the much-disputed fair one 
falls to the lot of a male sufficiently strong to maintain 



282 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

possession, and sufficiently remote not to yield to the 
temptation of neglecting to watch over her, in order to 
secure an additional bride. Meanwhile, the strong and 
vigorous males close to the shore will usually obtain 
from a dozen to fifteen wives, and as many as forty-five 
have been found appropriated by one powerful old male. 
The females never fight or quarrel with one another, and 
are said seldom to utter a cry of pain, although they are 
often severely wounded while being contended for by the 
males, who each seize them with their teeth. 

The sea-lions fight almost entirely with the mouth, 
and are often covered with scars and gashes, not unfre- 
quently losing an eye in their struggles. Mr. Elliott * 
tells us that they usually approach each other with 
averted heads and a great many false passes before 
either one or the other takes the initiative by gripping ; 
their heads are darted out and back with the greatest 
rapidity, their hoarse roaring or shrill whistling never 
ceasing, while their fat bodies writhe and swell with 
exertion and rage, blood streaming from their bodies and 
their fur flying about in all directions. When one of 
the combatants feels he has had enough and retires, he 
is never pursued by his conqueror, who remains quiet, 
uttering a peculiar chuckle, which seems to indicate 
satisfaction and contempt, keeping, however, a sharp 
eye open all the time for the next rival who may 
approach. 

Owing to their gregarious habits the females lie most 
contentedly together in the largest harems. The males 
during the breeding season remain wholly upon land, and 
they will suffer death rather than leave the spot they 
have chosen. They thus sustain, for a period of three 

* See his report on the Prybiloff group of Fur Seal Islands of 
Alaska. 



THE SEA-LION 283 

or even four months, an uninterrupted fast, being 
nourished wholly by the absorption of the fat of their 
own bodies, so that at the end of the breeding season 
— the beginning of August — they have become quite 
weak and emaciated. They have also to abstain entirely 
from water during this fast. 

As to their courage and determination in refusing to 
leave a chosen station, Mr. Elliott repeatedly tried to 
drive them away, and to put their courage to a test, he 
one day walked up to within twenty feet of a male, 
which had four females with him, and peppered him 
with dust shot. His bearing, in spite of the noise, smell 
of poTvdeT" «nd the pain he must have felt, did not change 
in the leatt from the usual attitude of determined 
defence which nearly all the males assume when attacked 
with showers of stones and noise. He would dart out 
right and left and catch the females, which timidly 
attempted to run away after each report, and fling and 
drag them back to their places ; then, stretching himself 
up to his full height, he looked Mr. Elliott directly and 
defiantly in the face, roaring and spitting most vehe- 
mently. He next made various little charges of ten or 
fifteen feet at his assailant, afterwards retreating to his 
old position which he would not go back from, seeming 
resolved to hold his own or die in the attempt. But 
though thus courageous and persevering in defence, the 
sea-lion never took the offensive beyond the boundary of 
his station, so far as Mr. Elliott observed. 

One pup is born at a time, and the mother's milk is 
abundant, rich, and creamy. But she seems very 
apathetic with her offspring. The observer before re- 
ferred to never saw a female caress or fondle her cub, 
and if it had strayed but a short distance beyond the 
bounds of the harem, it might be killed before the 



284 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

mother's eye without causing her to show the slightest 
concern. The same indifference is exhibited by the male 
to what takes place outside the space of ground he has 
made his own, but so long as the cubs, or pups, remain 
within it, he is their zealous and bold protector. The 
writer last quoted observes : 

"It is surprising to see how few of the pups get 
crushed to death while the ponderous males or ' bulls ' 
are floundering over each other when engaged in fighting. 
I have seen two bulls dash at each other with all the 
energy of furious rage, meeting right in the midst of 
a group of forty or fifty pups, trampling over them with 
their crushing weights, and bowling them over right and 
left in every direction, without injuring a single one. 
I do not think that more than one per cent, of the 
' pups born each season are lost in this manner on the 
rookeries. 

'' To test the vitality of these little animals, I kept 
one in the house to ascertain how long it could live with- 
out nursing, ha\H[ng taken it immediately after birth 
and before it could get any taste of its mother's milk ; it 
lived nine days, and in the whole time half of every day 
was spent in floundering about over the floor, accom- 
panying the movement with a persistent hoarse bleating. 
This experiment certainly shows wonderful vitality, and 
is worthy of an animal that can live four months without 
food or water, and preserve enough of its latent strength 
and vigour at the end of that time to go far off to sea, 
and return as fat and hearty as ever during the next 
season," 

It is often supposed that the sealskin we find at the 
furrier's is the animal's fur in a natural condition. 
Such is, however, by no means the case, for the freshly 
taken skin is not at all handsome looking. The beau- 
tiful fur which ladies know so well, is, in the natural 
condition, entirely concealed by a coat of stiff-brown or 
grey over-hair, which has to be carefully removed, and 



THE SEA-LION 285 

the skin is treated in a variety of ways before it is ready 
for the market. 

It appears that about a million of sea-lions are born 
annually in the Prybiloff Islands, and that with the 
arrangements now happily effected, we need no longer 
fear their extermination, in spite of the prodigious 
number annually destroyed. Besides man, these animals 
have to dread sharks, sword-fishes, and above all the 
grampus. 

The habits of the largest variety, Steller's sea -lion, are 
substantially like those of the fur-bearing kind, but it 
seems to be a less acutely jealous husband, and the herds 
do not form so many rows inwards from the shore. Its 
voice is a bark or a grand, deep roar. 

Such are the creatures known as sea-lions and sea- 
bears, but to understand them fully we must endeavour 
to estimate the position in which they stand to other 
animals, which are their close, or their moderately 
distant, zoological allies. 

Almost every one knows, to a certain extent, what a 
seal is. Of such animals there are said to be at least 
upwards of a dozen and a half distinct species, and nine 
are found in North America. Five of these nine are 
also to be met with in the northern part of the Old 
World. 

Seals may at once be distinguished from sea-lions and 
sea-bears by the fact that they have no external ear 
whatever, so that they are known by contrast with the 
latter as the ''earless-seals." None of them have soft 
woolly under fur like that of the furry sea-lions ; but 
they have, what the " eared-seals " have not, namely, 
five well developed claws to each foot. Of the five digits 
of the hand, the thumb is slightly the longest, while in 
the hind foot the digits which answer to our great and 



286 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

little toes are the longest and the middle one is the ' 
shortest. The toes are webbed, but the hind-limbs are 
very differently disposed from those of the sea-lion. 
Every one who has observed a seal's progress on land 
must have been struck with the singularly awkward and 
wriggling movement of its body. This is due to the 
fact that though the seal is a quadruped as regards the 
number of its limbs, it is no quadruped as regards their 
use. The sea-lion, as before stated, does walk on all 
fours — ^in spite of the little freedom of the hind limbs — 
and does turn its hind feet forwards, resting on the soles 
of those feet as it walks. 

The seal, however, is quite unable to turn its hind feet 
forward at all. Their soles are hairy, and it can never 
walk on them. On the land, therefore, the seal can only 
progress by contracting the muscles of its body, and by 
thus contorting its form, it is able to wriggle over the 
ground with more or less assistance from the fore-limbs. 
Nevertheless, it can thus shuffle along, especially over ■ 
the ice, with surprising speed. Its hind limbs are only 
useful to it for progression when in the water, and then 
they are extended backwards, applied together — with 
sole to sole — and flapped, alternately right and left, 
so as to serve in the same way as does the tail of a 
fish. 

Not only are the legs thus permanently bent back- 
wards, but they are bound together by a fold of skin 
which also embraces, and is attached to, the sides of the 
short tail. Little therefore as may be the resemblance 
or affinity existing between the seal and the bat, there is 
a certain similarity in the construction of this region of 
the body in these two very different lands of beasts. 
We saw, when considering the structure of the bat,* that 
* See p. 153 



THE SEA-LION 287 

most of them have what is called an " interfemoral 
membrane," that is to say, a membrane which extends 
inwards on either side from the leg, and embraces the 
tail. The seal therefore may also be said to possess an 
'' interfemoral membrane," though the influence it exerts 
is exercised in aquatic and not aerial locomotion. 

Seals would be exceedingly numerous but for their 
constant destruction by man. What this must be is 
indicated by the fact that two hundred thousand indivi- 
duals of the kind known as " the Greenland seal," are 
annually killed around Jan Mayen Island in the North 

Fig. 75. 




THE GREENLAND SEAL. 

Sea, by the crews of Scotch, Dutch and Norwegian 
vessels. Seals — that is "true seals" as distinguished 
from sea-lions — are naturally inhabitants of all the 
shores of the temperate and colder regions, and one kind 
found north of the Equator is also found south of it, 
yet, with one exception, not even a single genus is 
common to the northern and southern hemispheres. 

Many kinds of seals are gregarious, but others are 
solitary, and all are harmless animals to man if not 
attacked. They are very fond of basking in the sun- 
shine, and spend a large part of their time on sand-bars, 
rocks, or on the ice, according to circumstances. They 



288 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

are very inquisitive animals, and most kinds are strongly 
attracted by musical sounds. Seals live mainly on fishes, 
but also on molluscs and creatures of the crab and 
lobster kind. They can remain a long time beneath the 
surface of the water, certainly for a quarter of an hour. 

The young seals, strange to say, enter the water 
unwillingly, and have to be taught to swim by their 
parents. Some species will remain out of the water for 
three weeks after birth. Seals are remarkable for the 
affection they show to their young, and they are also 
very intelligent animals and readily learn to perform a 
number of surprising tricks. 

Like the sea-lions, seals fall victims to sharks and to 
the grampus, but many are also destroyed by polar 
bears. 

Several species migrate with regularity, and Mr. J. C. 
Stevenson has related how, during the summer and 
autumn, numbers of these creatures are met with in 
regions whence the approach of severe weather forces 
them to retreat southwards. This movement is anxi- 
ously watched for by the human inhabitants of the 
coasts along which they travel, and watchmen are set to 
communicate the news of the approach of the seals. They 
come at first in small detachments of from half a dozen to 
a score, and such will gradually increase in frequency for 
two or three days, when they come in hundreds. The 
main body then follows and averages two days in passing 
any spot. In all quarters, as far as the eye can carry, 
nothing is visible but seals, and the sea seems full of 
their heads. lu about a week the whole host, consisting 
of many hundreds of thousands, will follow the polar j 
current which sets through Hudson's Bay, and sweeps 
the coast of Labrador in a south-east direction. Then 
some go towards the Gulf of St. Lawrence, but most 



THE SEA-LION 289 

continue on till they come to the Gulf Stream on the 
banks of Newfoundland, which they reach about the end 
of each year. At the end of January they again begin 
to turn northwards. 

The vast destruction of seals by man has greatly 
diminished their numbers in many localities, and has 
actually exterminated them in not a few. The common 
seal is found both in Europe and America, and on the 
Pacific as well as on the Atlantic sides of the latter con- 
tinent. It is frequently met with in France and England, 
and is not rare in Spain. It is the only one which is 
common on the eastern coast of the United States. 

This kind, like other species of the group, is certainly 
attracted by musical sounds ; probably only through 
curiosity, because it is similarly attracted by any unusual 
movements. Mr. Bell tells us, in his " British Quad- 
rupeds," that, in the Orkney Islands, if people are passing 
in boats, seals will often come quite close up to the boat, 
and stare at them, following for a loDg time together ; if 
people speak loud, they seem to wonder what may be the 
matter ! The Church of Hoy, in Orkney, is situated near 
a small sandy bay, much frequented by these creatures, and 
it was observed that when the bell rang for divine service, 
all the seals wi.thin hearing swam directly for the shore, 
and kept looking about them, as if surprised rather than 
frightened, and this continued as long as the bells rang. 

Although it feeds mainly on fish, it will occasionally 
capture sea-birds, swimming beneath them and seizing 
them as they rest on the surface of the water, and they 
often make raids upon fishermen's nets. 

The Greenland, or harp seal is (Fig. 75) another 
northern form common to both hemispheres. It is of a 
yellowish white colour, and the male has a crescentic 
black mark encircling the greater part of its back. 

T 



290 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

Individuals of this species are often extremely abun- 
dant on the shores of Newfoundland, where hundreds 
of thousands of them are annually killed in the spring. 
It has been often said to visit England, and it is certain 
that one was captured in Morecambe Bay in 1874. 

At breeding time the females take up their stations on 
the ice very near each other, sometimes not a yard apart. 
The males accompany them, but mostly remain in the 
water, into which element the young, as before said, 
do not seem to enter voluntarily. 

Professor Jukes* tells us of a young one which was 
taken alive and became a very gentle and interesting pet. 
"He lay very quiet on deck, opening and elosing his 
curious nostrils — and occasionally lifting his fine lustrous 
eyes. On being patted on the head he drew it in till his 
face was perpendicular with his body, knitted his brows 
and closed his eyes and nostrils, thereby assuming a very 
comical expression of countenance. Although he was 
fierce when teased, and attempted to bite and scratch, he 
immediately became quiet on being stroked and petted." 

The ringed seal is an Arctic species, which descends 
southwards in both hemispheres, and has been captured 
in England on the coast of Norfolk. 

The Caspian seal, which inhabits the Caspian and the 
Aral Seas, seems to be very nearly related to the ringed 
seal, as also does the species known as the Siberian seal, 
which inhabits the lakes of Laikal and Orok. 

The bearded seal, or, as it is called in England, the 
great seal, seems first to have been distinctly recognised 
in 1743, when one was shown at Charing Cross. 
It extends from the Arctic Seas downwards to both 
the North Atlantic and the North Pacific. It has a 
curious habit of turning a somersault when about to 
* See " Excursion in Newfoundland," vol. i. 



i 



THE SEA-LION 291 

dive, by which it may be distinguished from other seals. 
Its food consists almost entirely of molluscs and creatures 
of the crab and lobster kind. It is said to be easily 
killed in the sea on account of its tendency to approach 
any boat ; but on the ice it is very watchful. Its flesh 
is also reported to be more delicate in taste than that of 
other species. 

The grey seal is exclusively confined to both sides of 
the North Atlantic. Its food consists mainly of fish, and 
especially of the tunny. In the beginning of October 
they seek rocks and islands which have not too pre- 
cipitous shores, and which are not covered by the spring 
tides. There the females bring forth their young about 
the middle of the month, and these do not enter the 
water till they are four or five weeks old. During that 
time the young are lying upon the dry land they do not 
leave their places, but every tide their mothers crawl up 
to them to suckle them. 

The bladder-nosed, or hooded, seal is distinguished, at 
least in the male sex, by the possession of a curious 
distensible muscular bag on the top of the head, extend- 
ing backwards from the muzzle to some inches behind 
the eyes. Its "bladder" is altogether about a foot 
long, and when fully distended is nine inches high. 
This animal is restricted to the colder parts of the North 
Atlantic and to portions of the Arctic Sea, ranging from 
Greenland to Spitzbergen, but being rarely found south 
of Norway and Newfoundland. They are not common 
animals or so easily seen as some other kinds, since they 
swim low, with only the top of the head above the 
surface. The males fight fiercely, but when the various 
families are constituted, their affection for each other, 
and especially for their young, is said to be very strong. 
Both parents will remain so persistently with their pups, 



292 



TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



that the whole family are easily destroyed, though the 
hood of the male affords such a protection to its owTier 
as to render the animal hard to kill with any ordinary 
club. 

The largest and most singular of the seals is the 
sea-elephant, which attains the length of nearly twenty 
feet. The nose of the adult male is prolonged into a 
short, tubular proboscis. This ordinarily hangs down, 
but can be dilated and prolonged under excitement. Its 
hind feet are devoid of nails. It was formerly abundant 

Fig. 76. 







THE SEA-ELEPHANT. 



in the Antarctic Seas, and also on the coast of California. 
There are two varieties, one confined to Western Mexico 
and Southern California, while the other is found in the 
Indian and South Pacific Oceans and the Antarctic 
Seas. 

The former variety is the smaller one. It was 
formerly very abundant on the Mexican and Californian 
coasts, but has become nearly extirpated. Captain 
Scammon, who in 1852 had command of a seahng brig, 
has given the following account of the chase of these 
animals : 



THE SEA-LION 293 

" The sailors," he tells us, " get between the herd 
and the water ; then raising all possible noise by shout- 
ing, and at the same time flourishing clubs, guns, and 
lances, the party advances slowly toward the rookery, 
when the animals will retreat, appearing in a state of 
great alarm. Occasionally an ovei'grown male will give 
battle, or attempt to escape, but a musket-ball through the 
brain despatches it, or some one checks its progress by 
thrusting a lance into the roof of its mouth, which causes 
it to settle on its haunches^ when two men with heavy 
ashen clubs give the creature repeated blows about the 
head till it is stunned or killed. After securing those that 
are disposed to show resistance, the party rush to the main 
body. The onslaught creates such a panic among these 
pecuHar creatures, that, losing all control of their actions, 
they climb, roll and tumble over each other, when 
prevented from fui^ther retreat by the projecting cliffs. 
We recollect in one instance, where sixty-five were 
captured, that several were found showing no signs of 
having been either clubbed or lanced, but were smothered 
by numbers of their kind heaped upon them. The 
whole flock, when attacked, manifest alarm by their 
peculiar roar, the sound of which, among the largest 
males, is nearly as loud as the lowing of an ox, but more 
prolonged in one strain, and accompanied by a rattling 
noise in the throat. The quantity of blood in this 
species of the seal tribe is supposed to be . double that 
contained in an ox, in proportion to its size. 

"After capture the flaying begins. First, with a 
large knife the skin is ripped along the upper side of the 
body the whole length, and then cut down as far as 
practicable, without rolling it over. Then the coating 
of fat that lies between the skin and flesh — which may 
be from one to seven inches in thickness, according to 
the size and condition of the animal — is cut into " horse- 
pieces," about eight inches wide, and twelve to fifteen 
long, and a puncture is made in each piece sufiiciently 
large to pass a rope through. After cleansing the upper 
portion of the body, it is rolled over, and cut all around 
as above described. Then the 'horse pieces* are strung 
on a rafter-rope and taken to the edge of the surf ; a 



294 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

long line is made fast to it, the end of which is thrown 
to a boat lying just outside the breakers ; they are then 
hauled through the rollers and towed to the vessel, when 
the oil is extracted by boiling the blubber. . . . The oil 
produced is superior to whale oil for lubricating purposes. 
Owing to the continual pursuit of the animals, they have 
become nearly, if not quite, extinct on the CaUfornian 
coast, and the few remaining have fled to some unknown 
point for security." 



Fig. 77. 




THE WALRUS. 



Our readers may gather from the foregoing sketch 
some notion of the group of seals, and so be enabled the 
better to understand, by contrast, the nature of the sea- 
lion. But there is an intermediate group which consists 
of the one very singular form known as the walrus or 
morse. Of these animals there are two varieties, one of 
which is found in the North Pacific and the other in the 
North Atlantic. Many naturalists, however, regard both 
these as constituting but one species. 

The walrus differs from the seals in that the hind feet 
are naked and turned forwards in walking on land, 
though not so completely as in the sea- lions. It difiers, 



THE SEA-LION 295 

on the contrary, from the sea-lions by not having any 
external ears. 

But it diverges from both these groups in that its 
teeth are all small, simple, one-rooted, and with flat 
crowns except the two upper eye-teeth, which are 
developed into immense tusks that descend a long 
distance below the lower jaw. The head is round, with 
a very short and broad muzzle furnished with stiflf 
bristles. The eyes are rather small. The tail is very 
rudimentary. The fore-feet have toes of nearly equal 
length, each with a minute flattened nail. The hind 
feet have the fi-fth toe slightly the longest, and it and the 
great toe bear minute flattened nails. The nails of the 
other three toes are long and pointed. The toes of the 
hind foot are furnished at their ends with processes of 
skin as in the sea-lions. 

The walrus is a very heavy bulky animal, which is 
especially thick about the shoulders, and measures eleven 
feet from the snout to the end of the tail. The body is 
covered with short, yellowish-brown hair, but this may 
become very scanty or almost entirely disappear with 
age. 

One of the earher accounts of this animal relates how 
some two hundred walruses were met with by William 
Barents, a Dutch navigator, in 1594, lying on the shore 
of Oray Island. It was, however, mentioned by Albert us 
Magnus in the 13th century, and it was figured in 
1568. 

The tusks, which are stronger in the male than in the 
female, are formidable weapons of about afoot and a half 
in length when fully developed, if not two or three inches 
longer. They are most powerful means of defence 
against Polar bears, or any other enemies which can be 
reached at close quarters. It is often said that they 



296 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

are used in climbing, but they seem to be principally 
employed to scrape and dig amidst the sand and shingle 
for the molluscs and other "shell -fish," which constitute 
the principal food of the walrus. It also feeds on sand- 
worms, starfishes, and shrimps. Various kinds of sea- 
weed have been found in its stomach, though it is not 
certain that such vegetable substance was intentionall}'' 
swallowed. 

It extends as far North as explorers have yet gone, 
and on the land round Hudson's Bay, Davis' Straits, and 
Greenland — but in rapidly decreasing -numbers. It still 
frequents Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, and the western 
part of the north coast of Siberia, as also northern 
Kamtschatka, Alaska, and the Prybiloff islands. Fossil 
remains show that it once inhabited France, Belgium, 
the United States, and England, and it has occasionally 
visited the British Isles during the present century. 

The word " walrus " is a modification of the Scandi- 
navian name " whale-horse." " Morse " is from the 
Russian " morss." The Lapp word is " morsk." 

Few animals have been more thoroughly misrepresented 
in fig- ires, than has the walrus. The reader interested to 
see copies of these, or who desires to be furnished with 
full details concerning all the animals here noticed, is 
referred to an admirable work on North American 
Pinnipeds, by J. A. Allen, and published at the Govern- 
ment Printing Office, Washington, in 1880. One of these 
strange figures represents the walrus with a fish-like 
body, covered with scales, a pig's head, tusks directed 
upwards, and long ears. Others, hardly less monstrous, 
also depict the animal with ascending tusks; but in 
1613, an admirably correct figure of the creature was 
given by Hessel Gerard, in which the hind feet are 
represented as being turned forwards. It is curious 



THE SEA-LION 297 

that later figures, until quite recent times, were made to 
depict the animal with its hind limbs turned backwards 
Hke those of a seal. 

The walruses are, according to Allen, always more or 
less gregarious, in larger or smaller companies according 
to their abundance. They seem to delight in huddling 
together on the ice-floes, or on shore, to which places 
they resort to bask in the sun. They are rarely seen 
far out in the open sea, and are restricted in their 
wanderings to the neighbourhood of shores, or large 
masses of floating ice. Though they often move from 
one feeding-ground to another, they do not truly migrate. 
Usually, but one young one is born at a time, never 
more than two ; and this takes place between April and 
June. The females (with their young, which they have 
been said to suckle for two years) seem to consort to- 
gether. Of thirty full-grown walruses killed in Henlopen 
Straits, in the month of July, not one was found to 
be a male. On some other occasions, however, males, 
females, and young have been found together. Their 
strong afl'ection for their young, and their sympathy for 
each other in times of danger, have been repeatedly 
noticed. 

Mr. Lamont, in his " Seasons with the Sea-horses," 
says : " I never witnessed anything more interesting and 
more affecting than the wonderful maternal affection of 
the walrus. I perceived that she held a very young calf 
under her right arm, as she saw that Christian wanted to 
harpoon it; but whenever he poised the weapon to 
throw, the old cow seemed to watch the direction of it, 
and interposed her own body, and she seemed to receive 
with pleasure several harpoons which were intended for 
the young one." 

When one individual has been wounded, the whole 



298 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

herd act altogether in common defence. If not interfered 
with, they are harmless and inofifensive, though they are 
fierce enough if attacked, when they prove dangerous 
antagonists. Owing either to confidence in its own 
powers, or want of appreciation of the danger of human 
foes, it has been said to be, as a rule, not easily alarmed, 
but permitting a near approach before manifesting 
uneasiness or fear. Other accounts, however, describe 
walruses as wary animals, usually keeping a sentinel on 
guard while the herd is asleep. 

Their voice is a loud roaring, and ^can be heard at a 
great distance. Dr. Kane has described it as " some- 
thing between the mooing of a cow and the deepest 
baying of a mastiff, very round and full, with its bark or 
detached notes repeated rather quickly seven or nine 
times in succession. 

As to the cruel and useless slaughter of these animals, 
Lamont tells us that in August 1852, two small sloops 
sailing in company approached an island, and soon 
discovered a herd of walruses, numbering, as they calcu- 
lated, from three to four thousand, reposing upon it. 
Four boats' crews, or sixteen men, proceeded to the 
attack with spears. The great mass of walruses lay in a 
small sandy bay, with rocks enclosing it on each side. A 
great many hundreds lay on other parts of the island at 
a little distance. The boats landed a little way ofi', so as 
not to frighten them, and the sixteen men, creeping 
along shore, got between the sea and the bay full of 
walruses. The walrus is very active and fierce in the 
water, when a herd will keep wonderfully together as 
they dive and reappear, a hundred grisly heads, with 
long gleaming white tusks, appearing above the waves at 
the same moment. On shore, however, they are very 
unwieldy and helpless, and those in the front soon 



THE SEA-LION 299 

succumbed to the lances of their assailants. The passage 
to the shore soon got so blocked up with the dead and 
dying that the unfortunate wretches behind could not 
pass over, and were in a manner barricaded by a wall of 
carcases. Considering that every thrust of a lance was 
worth twenty dollars, the scene must have been one of 
terrific excitement to the men. They slew, stabbed, 
slaughtered, butchered, and murdered, until most of 
their lances were rendered useless, and themselves were 
drenched with blood and exhausted with fatigue. They 
next went on board their vessels, ground their lances, 
and had their dinners, and then they returned to their 
sanguinary work; nor did they cry "hold, enough !" till 
they had killed nine hundred walruses, and yet so fear- 
less and so lethargic were the animals, that many 
hundreds more remained sluggishly lying on other parts 
of the island at no great distance. 

A walrus was brought to London in the reign of 
James I. " When the King and many honourable 
personages beheld it with adiniration for the strange- 
ness of the same."* Two specimens have of late reached 
the London Zoological Gardens, but lived but a very 
short time. That this species possesses docility and 
intelligence similar to that of the seal, is shown by some 
observations reported by Mr. Brown f with respect to a 
young one he saw on board a ship in Davis' Straits in 
1 86 1, and which had been caught off the coasts of 
Greenland : 

" It was fed on oatmeal and water and pea soup, and 
seemed to thrive. No fish could be got for it, and the 
only animal food which it obtained was a little freshened 

* "Purchas, his pilgrimes," 1624, vol. ill. p. 560. 
t In a very interesting communication made to the Zoological 
Society cf London on June 25, 1868. 



300 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

beef or pork, or bear's flesh, which it readily ate. It had 
its likes and dislikes, and its favourites on board whom 
it instantly recognised. It became exceedingly irritated 
if a newspaper was shaken in its face, when it would run 
open-mouthed all over the deck after the perpetrator. 
Sometimes it would run at a clumsy rate into the sur- 
geon's or captain's cabins, or from one side of the ship 
towards the other and back again, in imitation of such 
a movement (' sallying ') on the part of the sailors. It 
lay during the day basking in the sun, lazily tossing its 
flippers in the air, and appearing perfectly at home. One 
day the captain tried it in the water for the first time ; 
but it was quite awkward and got into the floe, where it 
was unable to extricate itself till its master went out on 
the ice and called it by name, when it immediately came 
out from under the ice and was, to its great joy, safely 
assisted on board again, apparently heartily sick of its 
mother element. It hved a little over three months." 

Mr. Lamont captured several young walruses ; three 
of them were kept in a pen on board ship together. One 
of them " Tommy," was a great pet, but to the general 
grief he was one day found dead, with his face immersed 
in a pail of gruel, and one of the others lying on the top 
of him — clearly sufibcated. 

On reviewing the facts herein stated, it will be seen 
that the sea-lion belongs to a group of aquatic four-legged 
beasts which is divisible into three groups : (i) eared 
seals, (2) walruses, and (3) true seals, of the first of 
which three it is a member. The whole group is con- 
sidered to rank as an " order," known from the peculiar 
modification of their paws, as the order of Pinnipedia. 

But to what other order of beasts are the Pinnipeds 
allied ? There can be no doubt that they are allied to 
the Carnivora, or beasts of prey, and not at all to the 
porpoises and dolphins — though these latter are also 
aquatic, warm-blooded beasts, and not fishes. Neverthe- 



THE SEA-LION 301 

less, the organisation of the Pinnipeds is in many respects 
very different from that of the ordinary Carnivores, so 
that there might be a suspicion that such resemblances 
as do exist between them may have been due, as we have 
seen to be the case in so many other cases, to an inde- 
pendent origin of similar structures. 

But a certain curious and recondite similarity of in- 
ternal structure indicates the existence of a real affinity 
between Pinnipeds and Carnivores. In the latter — in 
dogs, cats, civets, bears, weasels, and racoons — some 
folds of brain substance, on the anterior portion of 
the upper surface of the brain, give rise to a certain 
pattern and appearance which may be compared with 
what is known in heraldry as an " escutcheon of pre- 
tence." A careful examination of the brains of seals, 
walruses, and sea-lions, shows that they have also the 
same condition of brain structure though it is not at first 
so readily apparent as in ordinary Carnivores. Since 
such a resemblance can hardly be the result of surround- 
ing conditions and so have arisen independently, we 
think it may be safely regarded as a true indica- 
tion of the existence of a real, more or less hidden, 
affinity. But though we thus seem forced to admit a 
genetic relationship between Pinnipeds, and, at least, the 
ancestors of our existing terrestrial Carnivores, it does 
not follow that all Pinnipeds have had the same origin. 
There are many resemblances between the sea-lions and 
ordinary bears, and one such resemblance consists in the 
fact that the members of both these groups possess in 
the skull that canal for a branch of the carotid artery 
which we have, (in our article on the American bison), 
called the " canal in the wing-wedge bone of the skull." 
Such a canal is wanting in ordinary seals, and it is 
wanting also in that aquatic modification of the weasel 



302 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

type of structure, the otter. It is possible, therefore, 
that sea-lions and bears may have had one common 
ancestor, and seals and otters another and distinct com- 
mon ancestor. If so, much of that resemblance between 
seals and sea-lions which is related to their similar aquatic 
habits of life, may really have arisen independently, so 
that they together form, in our own day, a much more 
homogeneous group than they formed at some anterior 
epoch. This, however, is mere speculation, and we are 
far from wishing to insist upon even its probable truth. 
It is an interesting possibility and no more. 

The argument against it is that bears seem to be a 
very modern group of mammals, and it may be said that 
both seals and sea-lions are descendants, not of any forms 
which closely resemble existing land-Carnivora, but 
rather of certain beasts, remains of which have been 
found deep down in tertiary strata — in the Eocene for- 
mations of Europe and North America — and which are 
known to naturalists as the " Creodonta." Such creatures 
have been closely studied in A merica by Professor Cope, 
and it may turn out not only that they were the common 
ancestors of the existing Pinnipeds and land Carnivores, 
but also of the whole of those much more divergent 
groups, which together constitute the ordinary or pla- 
cental mammals of to-day, together with the pouched 
beasts which are distinguished from them as Didelphous 
mammals,* as was explained at some length in our article 
on the opossum. 

* See p. 62. 



XI 

WHALES AND MERMAIDS 

In the time of Alexander the Great and afterwards tinder 
the Seleucidae, the ancient Greeks became acquainted 
with the north-western part of India. Then and there 
they heard many strange tales, which, as usual (especially 
when two different races and languages are concerned), 
lost nothing in the telling. Among other things, they 
heard that the seas about Ceylon were peopled with 
mermaids. In this case, as in the case of so many other 
wonderful tales, there was a certain amount of truth 
underlying the fiction ; for those seas are peopled by 
creatures (as big or bigger than human beings), which 
have a habit of raising themselves up vertically out of 
the water, when they present a very startling appear- 
ance to an unscientifically critical eye. Astonished 
travellers beheld beings with rounded, human-looking 
heads, showing their body down to the bust out of the 
water, displaying a pair of rounded prominent breasts, 
and not seldom holding a baby in their arms. After 
remaining some time in this attitude, they would suddenly 
dive, and then a tail like a fish's became exposed to 
view. Small wonder, then, that sailors should imagine 
they were beholding creatures half woman and half fish, 
for the vivacity of a sailor's imagination is proverbial. 

But the creature thus seen is as different in temper 
and habits from the fabled mermaid as i% is in body. 



304 TYPES OF ANIAIAL LIFE 

Instead of seeking to seduce unwary voyagers to visit its 
home beneath the waves, in order there to devour them, 
the dugong (for that is the name of this sort of mermaid) 
browses peacefully on seaweed, and is as harmless as it is 
curious. 

It is a creature which, as ordinarily met with, is about 
eight feet long. Only a faintly marked neck is visible 
between the head and the trunk, which tapers gra- 
dually backward to end in a horizontally flattened tail. 
Unhke the seals and sea bears, the dugong has no trace 
of any hind limb, and has only a pair of short paddle- 
shaped fore-hmbs, the five digits of which are enclosed 



THE DUGONG. 



in a common fold of skin, and are not therefore visible 
externally. They have no nails. Deep in the body of 
the animal are small bones which are the rudiments of 
that bony structure (called the pelvis) to which our 
thigh bones are articulated. But there is no rudiment 
representing the thigh bone itself. 

The skin of the body is very thick, rough, and almost 
naked, but with a few hairs. Some hairs extend inside 
the cheek, and there are stray bristles on the lips. The 
eyes are small, there are no external ears, and the 
nostrils can be closed, having each a valvular external 
aperture. 



WHALES AND MERMAIDS 305 

We have met with, in the otters, animals specially 
organised for an aquatic life, and in the sea-bears and 
especially in the seals, creatures yet more exclusively so 
constructed, since the last-named animals can progress 
on land only with awkwardness and difficulty. Still all 
these beasts can so progress, either in quadrupedal fashion 
- — as do otters and sea-bears — or by convulsive bodily 
contortions, as do the seals. But in the dugong, for the 
first time (in our survey of different forms of life) we 
come upon a creature absolutely aquatic and quite unable 
to live on land. Indeed, not only does it remain afloat, 
but it even avoids very shallow water, partly on account 
of its terrestrial helplessness, and partly on account of 
its seaweed diet. 

It is found in the Ked Sea, off the east coast of Africa, 
near Ceylon, in the islands of the Bay of Bengal, and 
the Indian Archipelago, including the Philippine Islands, 
and on the north of Australia. Thus it may be said to 
range the Indian Ocean and a portion of the Pacific. 

In Australia the dugong is now regularly " fished " on 
account of its oil, which is peculiarly clear, limpid, and 
free from any disagreeable odour, and is said to have 
the same salutary qualities as cod-liver oil. It is a slow, 
inactive, mild, and inoffensive animal, incapable of self- 
defence, and apparently destined ere long to become 
extinct and disappear, as we shall see shortly that one of 
its near relations has already done. 

Before passing to the nearest surviving species, a word 
or two must be said as to its teeth and the structure of 
its palate. In the first place, the male dugong possesses 
a pair of large, nearly straight tusks, which project 
downward to a short distance beyond the mouth. They 
may remind the reader of the tusks of the walrus, but 
they are shorter and of a different nature, for they are 



3o6 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

not '' canines," but "incisors"; that is to say, they do 
not answer to our " eye teeth," but to two of our " upper 
cutting teeth," which are placed between our eye teeth. 
The creature has some grinding teeth, but what is most 
curious is the presence of a large, rough, horny plate 
which clothes the front part of the palate, and another 
similar plate which rubs against the former, and clothes 
the front of the lower jaw. The reader may perhaps 
recollect that in ruminants there is a small horny pad at 
the front of the upper jaw, against which the teeth 
of the lower jaw bite. This pad, however, is only a 
Fig. 79. 




THE MANATEE. 



mere rudiment of that we meet with in the dugong. 
But, in our survey of the creatures noticed in this 
article, we shall shortly describe a very much exagger- 
ated structure of a more or less similar kind. 

The manatee is another " mermaid," and a cousin of 
the dugong, which it closely resembles in general form. 
It is a denizen of America, and even of the United 
States, as it is found in. Florida as well as in some of the ^ 
West Indian Islands, and in South America to 20° South 
latitude. It ascends high up in the rivers of Brazil, and 
is found on the west coast of tropical Africa and also in 
its rivers, even as far into the interior as Lade Tchad. 

Its length does not appear to exceed eight feet. It 
has, like the dugong, horny plates in the front of its jaws, 



WHALES AND MERMAIDS 307 

but differs from the last-named animal in having no 
tusks, though it has more grinding teeth. In the young 
there are rudimentary teeth concealed beneath the horny 
plates. As they never penetrate these plates they must 
be useless, and they quite disappear before the animal is 
adult. The manatee has a very peculiar upper lip, which 
has a median division, on each side of which is a lateral 
lobe or pad. These pads may either be moved apart or 
be brought closely together, and thus the animal can 
grasp its food. When about to feed it will first separate 
the two lateral lobes and then close them upon the 
branch or leaf it is going to feed on, afterward bending 
back the whole lip, so as to introduce the food thus 
seized into its mouth without any need of employing the 
lower lip for this purpose. 

We saw when studying the sloth that the number of 
bones in the neck of nearly all beasts is, as also in man, 
seven. Such is also the case in the dugong, but in the 
manatee — though its neck is no shorter — there are but 
six such bones. 

The name " manatee " seems to have been given 
originally to this animal by some of the first Spanish 
settlers in the West Indies, on account of the strangely 
free and hand- like use it can make of its paddle-like fore 
limbs. It uses them for bringing food towards its 
mouth, and can bend the wrist and elbow, as well as the 
shoulder-joint. There are generally also more or less 
rudimentary nails on the fingers. 

The manatee differs in habits from the dugong in that 
it frequents rivers, estuaries, and lagoons, preferring 
shallow water, and quite eschewing the open sea. It 
feeds exclusively on aquatic plants, on which it browses 
under water, and is extremely slow in its movements 
and inactive. It has a small and simply formed brain 



3o8 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

and is harmless and perfectly inoffensive. In deep water 
it often floats with its body much arched, its head and 
tail hanging downward. In shallow water it will sup- 
port itself on the end of its tail or will crawl about, only 
applying the tips of its paddles to the ground. 

Manatees never voluntarily quit the water, not only 
on account of their being so extremely unsuited for 
progression on land, but also because (from the struc- 
ture of their bodies) they cannot there breathe at their 
ease. 

In 1878 a fully grown female was caught in British 
Guiana, where they now seem to be getting very scarce. 
On the voyage across the Atlantic it was kept in a large 
box two-thirds filled with fresh water. This was placed 
near the donkey engine, so that steam could every now 
and then be passed into the water to maintain the 
temperature of the latter at a steady warmth in colder 
latitudes. Having arrived at Greenock, it was conveyed 
to London by rail, warm water being occasionally poured 
into its tank on the journey. During the night the 
manatee frequently raised itself and tried to get out of 
its box. After its arrival at the Westminster Aquarium 
it was nearly a week before it would feed. Its owners, 
alarmed for its life, then fed it by force. The water was 
drained off from its tank, and three persons entering it, 
inserted a cork in the forepart of the mouth, whereupon 
some milk was injected by a syringe. The manatee, 
though ordinarily exceedingly quiet and gentle in its de- 
meanour, evidently objected much to the proceeding, and, 
though obliged to swallow some of the milk, rejected what 
it couid, using so much force that it was all the three 
men could do to restrain it. But neither then nor at any 
other time did it utter a sound, nor attempt to bite or in 
any other way injure its assailants, though floundering, 



WHALES AND MERMAIDS 309 

wriggling, and struggling with all its might. Thence- 
forward it fed spontaneously on the green food given it 
which floated in the water of the tank. Its favourite food 
was lettuce, but it would also eat cabbage and watercress, 
and altogether consumed from 90 to 112 pounds of green 
food daily. Its tank was kept at a temperature of from 
70° to 74° Fahrenheit, and for six months all went well. 
But unfortunately, about Christmas, during very cold 
weather, its keeper accidentally allowed the water one 
night to drain away, so that it was left dry in a cold 
atmosphere. Next morning, after being freshly supplied 
with water, it appeared ill. It refused food, and became 
thinner and thinner, till it died from exhaustion on the 
15th of March 1879. 

Quiet stolidity and stupidity seem to characterise 
it in its native haunts as well as in captivity. The 
Aquarium specimen was nocturnal in its habits, feeding 
by night. During the greater part of the day it 
dozed in various attitudes, every now and then rising 
lazily, and apparently without the slightest effort, to the 
surface to breathe ; or occasionally it made a move round 
the tank in a quiet, unconcerned manner. Then it 
would poke its nose close np to the glass, remaining 
stationary there for a time without showing either fear 
of, or interest in, the numerous spectators frequenting 
the Aquarium. 

A fine, robust young male arrived at Liverpool from 
Trinidad in September of the same year, and was pur- 
chased for the Aquarium at Brighton, where it was kept 
with a young female that was obtained a few months 
previously. They are said to have recognised the voice 
of their keeper, and seemed to enjoy having their backs 
brushed by him. It is reported"^ that they habituall}^ 
* " Proceedings of the Zool. Soc. 1881," p. 456. 



3IO TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

assumed a horizontal position, the body, when resting on 
the ground, being supported by the under surface of the 
tail fin, and it may be that the posture assumed by the 
Westminster specimen was due to one of its paddles 
having been injured. They eat by preference lettuces 
and endives, and these were always swallowed under 
water, and they never eat when removed from it, though 
food was repeatedly then ofifered them. When out of 
the water they seemed to be oppressed with their own 
bulk, and could only progress a few inches by means of 
pressing their jaws and tail fin closely to the ground, and 
making violent lateral efibrts of the body, slightly sup- 
ported by the paddles. 

The male devoured his food more rapidly than the 
female, and thus obtained an undue share, so that it was 
thought advisable to separate them at feeding time. 
For this purpose a wooden partition, fitting into a 
groove in the floor and fastened by upright supports, 
was occasionally let down into the tank, projecting a 
few inches above the surface of the water. The female 
took no notice of this alteration, but invariably waited 
before commencing to feed until her mate was supplied 
on his side with a portion. The necessity for the separa- 
tion soon became apparent ; for the male cleared up 
every scrap of food long before the female, a more dainty 
and delicate feeder, had finished. He then became very 
restive, swimming actively around his straitened quar- 
ters, pressed his nose against the partition, rolled over 
on his back, and exerted considerable force in his obsti- 
nate and repeated attempts to remove the obnoxious 
obstacle. Failing in his endeavours to push it on one 
side, he next tried to get over it, lifted his head above 
the water, feeling the edge of the partition with his fore 
paddles and raising them till they were almost level with 
the projecting edge. 



WHALES AND MERMAIDS 311 

In the spring of the year 1880, the female manatee 
died, after several months' existence in the Aquarium. 
The history of the male in the ^bsequent interval may 
be epitomised in the words " lie still and grow fat." He 
evinced no grief at the loss of his companion. 

The dugong and the manatee are the only two mer- 
maid kinds now existing on the surface of this planet. 
But a Uttle more than a hundred and twenty years ago 
there was a third kind, much larger than either of the 
existing ones, as it attained a length of from twenty to 
twenty-four feet. It was the Rhytina, and its destruc- 
tion is one of the few well-attested examples of the 
extirpation of a species altogether by human agency. 
When first found it abounded, but very soon it entirely 
disappeared. 

Eastern Siberia was not known to Europeans before 
the seventeenth century, but in the latter part of it that 
region came into the possession of Hussia, after which 
it was visited by hunters and peopled by emigrants, who 
hunted the fur-bearing animals to be found there. 

In 1 71 8 Peter the Great sent a special mission to 
explore the chain of the Kurile Islands, and a little 
later, in 1727-29, another expedition set out, under 
Behring, thoroughly to explore Kamtschatka. Behring 
returned and made his report, but no such animal as the 
rhytina is mentioned in it. Some years later, in 1740, 
Behring visited Kamtschatka again and spent the winter 
there, having with him the remarkable and energetic 
naturalist, Steller, too early lost to science. Neverthe- 
less they did not find the rhytina, and no one else has 
ever found it there, though large rewards have been 
offered for its discovery in that country. In 1 741, how- 
ever, Behring went again to the eastern shore of Asia, 
when he fitted out two ships, in one of which certain 
individuals embarked, Behring and Steller being of the 



312 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

company. They then crossed the North Pacific, and 
having (for the sake of a reward) stopped a few hours on 
the American coast, sought to return as quickly as 
possible. They were, however, wrecked on a little island 
at no great distance from the coast of Kamtschatka, now 
known as Behring Island. There Steller met with this 
animal, afterwards named rhytina by the naturalist 
Illiger. Steller, who was on the look-out for American 
things, took the animal to be that American mermaid, 
the manatee. Probably because of this and on account 
of the enormous multitude of individuals met with — 
perhaps also for lack of space — he took no part of the 
animal back with him. But he found that the crea- 
ture's flesh was very good to eat, and so recommended 
traders to use it for provision. This advice was only 
too readily and perseveringly acted on, for in twenty- 
seven years from that date not a single living rhytina 
remained, the last being killed in 1768, so far as any 
certain information has been obtained. It appears never 
to have inhabited the Aleutian Isles, nor America, nor 
Kamtschatka, nor the Kurile Islands, but when first 
discovered was extremely numerous at Behring Island, 
finding abundant food in the large seaweeds which float 
about the coast. But its habits and disposition easily 
account for its rapid destruction. Like the manatee, 
the rhytina was very voracious, but it only fed in shallow 
water, and had very frequently to come to the surface 
to breathe. It was also exceedingly stupid and dull of 
sight and hearing, but perhaps its affectionate feelings 
were even more fatal to it, for if either a male or female 
were harpooned, its mate remained beside it and made 
endless stupid efforts to relieve it. 

So completely destroyed was it that people became 
sceptical as to its ever having existed. But Brandt 



WHALES AND MERMAIDS 313 

found in the Museum of St. Petersburg a horny plate 
which exactly resembled that which had been figured 
by Steller (and it was the only thing he had figured) in 
his account of the animal. The discovery of this plate 
thus served to prove both the truth of Steller's narrative 
and the animal's, previously unknown, nature. Afterward 
an imperfect skull was found at Behring Island, then 
three nearly complete skeletons were discovered, and 
recently yet other bones have been extracted from the 
frozen soil. 

In form it resembled the dugong and manatee, but its 
head was relatively smaller and it had no teeth whatever, 
only a horny plate in each jaw. It had a thick, rugged, 
naked skin, though there were brush-like hairs on the 
paddles. It was of a dark brown colour, sometimes 
spotted or streaked with white. 

The extinction of this animal may remind our readers 
of what was said in our notice of the turkey about the 
extirpation of the dodo. That bird had, like the rhytina, 
no means of escape or defence, was good for eating, and 
entirely confined to a minute and remote part of the 
earth's surface. 

But how came the rhytina to dwell in such a tiny, out- 
of-the-way spot, and where did mermaids come from, and 
what may have been their ancestors ? That their ances- 
tors were quadrupeds and were once widely distributed 
over the earth's surface there can be no doubt. In the 
middle and later tertiary times mermaids of different 
kinds abounded in the European seas and swam about 
on the English coast where now is Suffolk. They were 
more or less like the dugong, but, though some of them 
were larger, their tusks were smaller. Their typical form 
has been named Halitheriurn, and the most remarkable 
thing about it is the fact that it had a pair of small 



314 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

thigh bones, though there could have been no external 
appearance of hind-limbs any more than in the three 
previously described mermaids. The naturalist Illiger, 
who gave the rhytina its name, called the small group I 
have spoken of as mermaids, by the name of Sirens, and 
the group (order) is now known by naturalists by the 
term Sirenia. The mode and source of their evolution 
are still quite unsolved problems, but there are not 
wanting indications that they may be collateral descend- 
ants of elephants and Dinotheria. If so, they can put 
in some claim to rank as odd-toed ungulates, absurd and 
paradoxical as it may seem to reckon among odd -toed 
hoofed beasts, creatures which have not only no " hoofs/' 
but no " toes " either ! 

But if we cannot positively say what are the nearest 
relatives of the mermaids, our predecessors reckoned 
them as belonging to the group of whales and por- 
poises — an order termed by naturalists Cetacea. Our 
" mermaids " were formerly spoken of as the " Herbi- 
vorous Cetacea," to distinguish them from the creatures 
belonging to the other group of creatures (the whales 
and porpoises), all of which live on animal food. 

To the consideration of these latter, which are the 
only true Cetacea, we will now turn. 

They offer a most wonderful example of the puzzling 
and often misleading effects which external conditions 
can sometimes bring about, and are a notable warning 
how necessary it is when we seek to find out the affinities 
of the different animals not to rely much upon external 
characters when these are closely related to their mode 
of Hfe. Whales and porpoises were long considered, very 
naturally, to be " fishes," and were classed among them 
even by the great naturalist, Ray. Their general form 
of body — which is spindle-shaped, with no sign of a neck 



I 



I 



WHALES AND MERMAIDS 315 

between the head and the trunk, while posteriorly it 
tapers gradually to and in an expanded tail fin — is very 
fish-like, while their single pair of paddles are much 
more like tins than are those of the dugong and manatee. 
Nevertheless, in all essentials, whales and porpoises are 
true " beasts." They possess all the characteristics of 
that class, and are both warm-blooded and suckle their 
young. Not only is a whale much more like a bat or a 
squirrel than it is like a fish, but in many respects there 
is much more diflference between a fish and a whale than 
there is between a whale and a humming-bird. 




THE GREENLAND WHALE. 

But whales and porpoises form a group or order of 
animals which is exceedingly well defined and distinct 
from every other order of mammals. Of all beasts they 
are the most completely and exclusively organised for 
aquatic life, being perfectly helpless on land, more so 
than even the dugong and manatee, and out of all com- 
parison more so than seals or otters. On the other 
hand, no beasts are so perfectly at home in the open 
ocean, where the majority of species constantly disport 
themselves, though a few are inhabitants of rivers. 

The true, or Greenland, whale is one of the largest 
animals which now lives, or, so far as we yet know, ever has 
lived, being from forty-five to fifty feet in length. More 



3i6 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

than one-third of this is occupied by its enormous head^ 
the vast size of which is due to the great jaws which 
enclose what one might call an immense cavern con- 
taining the tongue and a quantity of horny plates — the 
so-called "whalebone." The upper jaw-bone is very 
narrow from side to side, but much arched from before 
backwards, while the lower jaw is greatly arched outward 
on either side. The upper Hp is rudimentary, but it is 
met by a prodigious lower lip which stands up stiffly 
with a very convex margin from before backwards. Just 
behind the mouth is the small eye, close behind which 
again is the scarcely perceptible opening of the ear. The 
nose opens near the summit of the head by two crescentic 
apertures which can be opened or closed at will. A 
little behind and below the eye, the fore-limb, or paddle 
juts out. This has no power of motion except at the 
shoulder- joint, although inside it are bones representing 
those of the upper and forearm and of the five fingers of 
man and other pentadactyle beasts. But whereas in 
man and all such beasts the number of bones in every 
finger never exceeds three, here there are five in what 
represents the middle finger, and four in the skeleton 
of the digit on either side of it. At the hinder end of 
the body is a tail-fin in the form of two lateral pointed 
expansions of skin, supported by a dense fibrous substance 
within. Though no trace of any posterior limb is visible 
externally, there is, deep in the interior of the animal, a 
bone, only about eight inches long, which probably 
represents the thigh bone and bears at its extremity a 
small ossicle, which may be regarded as a rudiment of 
the shin bone. The former of these two bones is 
attached to a rudimentary representation of the pelvis, 
which exists here as well as in the mermaids. Although 
the neck is so short as to be imperceptible externally, 



WHALES AND MERMAIDS 317 

there are the usual seven bones in it, though they all 
become united into one mass, or all of them save the 
seventh. The surface of the skin is smooth and glisten- 
ing, and quite devoid of hair, but the body is kept warm 
by means of a thick layer of fat — the so-called " blubber " 
— which lies immediately beneath the skin. Within the 
enormous mouth there is, on either side, a series of long, 
flattened, horny plates (the whalebone), which grow on, 
and hang down from, the roof of the mouth. They thus 
form two longitudinal series, each plate of which is 
placed transversely to the long axis of the whale's body, 
and all are very close together. The outer edges of the 
plates are solid and nearly straight, but their inner edges 
incline outward, each plate becoming narrower as it 
extends downward. These oblique inner edges are also 
furnished with numerous coarse, hair-like processes, con- 
sisting of some of the constituent fibres of the horny 
plates, which as it were fray out, and the mouth is thui? 
lined, except below, by a network of countless fibres 
projecting from the inner edges of the two series of 
plates. This network acts as a sort of sieve. When the 
whale feeds, it takes into its mouth a great gulp of water, 
which it drives out again with its tongue through the 
intervals of the horny plates of baleen, the fluid thus 
traversing the sieve of horny fibres which retains the 
small creatures — shrimp-like creatures and molluscs — 
on which these marine monsters subsist. Water in the 
mouth is no impediment to the whale's breathing, as the 
upper part of its windpipe (the larynx) passes up into 
and is enclosed by the back part of the nostrils, and thus 
no water can pass into the windpipe from the mouth. 
The longest of the baleen plates attains a length of ten 
or twelve feet, and there are some three hundred and 
eighty on either side, the series consisting, of couise, 



3i8 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

of short plates at each end, the longest being in the 
middle of either series. They are so long that when the 
mouth is shut they he back along its floor, their elas- 
ticity straightening them wheal the mouth is opened. 
It is to these horny plates that we referred when, in 
our notice of the dugong, we said that we should later 
describe a very exaggerated structure, somewhat similar 
to the palate plate of that animal. The adult whalebone 
whales are entirely devoid of teeth, though before birth 
many minute calcified teeth are formed in each jaw. But 
these are entirely absorbed and disappear before birth. 
The brain is four or five times as massive as that of any 
other animal. 

The Greenland whale is known as the '' right " whale 
because it is the right kind for the fishermen who seek 
for whalebone and blubber. It ranges round the North 
Pole, and is found on both sides of Greenland, and off 
the coast of Labrador. In Behring Sea and the Sea of 
Okhotsk its southern limit seems to be latitude 54°. It 
is possible, but very improbable, that a straggler may 
have reached the British coast. 

Much has been mistakenly said about the " blowing " 
and "spouting" of whales and other cetaceans. They 
do not really send out water from their nostrils, but 
only their breath when they breathe. They do not, of 
course, breathe rapidly as do land animals, since they 
require to come to the surface to do so. This is the 
reason why the tail is expanded horizontally in whales 
and mermaids. That shape helps them thus to rise by 
striking with the tail, while fishes, which do not need 
thus to rise, have the tail fin expanded vertically. 
When cetaceans rise to breathe, they forcibly expel a 
great volume of warm, moist air from their lungs. 
This ordinarily takes place in a cold atmosphere, and 



WHALES AND MERMAIDS 319 

always does so in the Greenland whale, which is never 
far from ice. The column of warm moist air thus 
becomes immediately transformed into a cloud of 'minute 
particles of water. Besides this, when they "spout" 
before quite reaching the surface they may also raise up 
a jet of water, which their act of expiration displaces 
and casts upward. 

Although a " right " whale never visits, and probably 
never did visit, the temperate part of the Atlantic, there 
is a southern kind — with a shorter head and less baleen 
— which is found in the temperate seas of both the 
northern and the southern hemispheres, and presents 
four varieties, often reckoned as species. One of these 
varieties inhabited the North Atlantic, and no doubt was 
often seen, in early days, " spouting " as it traversed the 
Straits of Dover. Four or five hundred years ago it was 
exceedingly common, and in the Middle Ages was keenly 
pursued by the Basques. From before the Norman 
Conquest, till the period of the Beformation, oil and 
whalebone were sent over Europe from Bayonne and 
San Sebastian, and from other places between those 
cities. As they grew scarce, the Greenland whale was 
met with in seeking a north-west passage to India, and 
has since become the great object of pursuit. Still, the 
southern kind has visited the Spanish coast so late as 
189T, while in 1877, one came to southern Italy. It 
may now also be seen occasionally in New York Harbour, 
the Delaware Biver, and the coast of Maryland. 

A whale known as the " humpback," so called because 
it possesses a dorsal fin (which the right whales do not) of 
a low hump-like form, ranges the Atlantic from Green- 
land and Norway, and sometimes makes its appearance 
on the coasts of the British Isles. Its length is from 
forty-five to fifty-five feet, and the female is the larger. 



320 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

Its most remarkable character is the great length of its 
fin-like arms, and it differs also from the true whales in 
having numerous long grooves, or folds, extending 
beneath the throat. 

Certain whales, known as rorquals, finbacks, or razor- 
backs, have still more numerous folds beneath the throat ; 
they have also a dorsal fin, but only four fingers are 
enclosed in their relatively short limb. These are the 
commonest kinds of whales, and some of their varieties 
are to be found all over the world except in extreme polar 
regions. The blue rorqual is the largest animal known, 
attaining sometimes a length of seventy feet. It feeds 
on fishes and largely on herrings, but other varieties 
feed exclusively on shrimp-like creatures. 

The rorquals have much shorter whalebone and much 
less blubber than have the right whales, so that they 
were little cared for till of late, when on account of the 
increasing rarity of the more valuable species, rorquals 
have begun to be regularly fished. The grey rorqual 
frequents the western shores of the United States from 
December to March, and the females enter the lagoons 
of Lower Cahfornia to bring forth their young. In 
October and ISTovember they skirt the coasts of Cali- 
fornia and Oregon going southward. 

The toothed whales are far more numerous in species 
than are the whalebone whales. They ought rather to 
be called " whaleboneless " than toothed, as a few kinds 
have no teeth, while a whole section of the group is 
without any teeth in the upper jaw, and there may be 
but a pair in the lower jaw. 

The sperm whale, or cachalot, is the giant of the 
group, attaining a length of from fifty-five to sixty feet. 
One-third of this total length is occupied by the head, 
which, seen in profile, has a rectangular anterior end, 



WHALES AND MERMAIDS 321 

being truncated vertically in front. Unlike the right 
whales, the lower jaw is small (without any prominent 
upwardly projecting lip), is set with numerous simply 
conical teeth, and does not extend so far forward as the 
muzzle. The bones which support the immense upper 
jaw, do not by any means correspond with it in shape, 
for the upper surface of the skull is much lower and 
concave. The great mass of the upper jaw consists only 
of about a ton of an oily substance which yields " sper- 
maceti," while the blubber, which everywhere copiously 
clothes the body, is the source of what is known as 
" sperm oil." The substance known as " ambergris " by 
perfumers, is also a product of this animal, being a con- 
cretion formed in its intestines. The nostrils have but a 
single external aperture, which opens close to the front 
end of the top of the snout, a little to the left of it, and 
so the animal "spouts" forward and over to one side. 
Some one-sidedness and want of symmetry are also to be 
found in the bones of the skull in this animal and. more 
or less, in all toothed whales. The nasal passage from 
the roof of the mouth to the external aperture, or 
*' spiracle," may be twenty feet in length. The general 
colour is black, but the belly is grey. The sperm whale 
is a very widely diffused animal in all the warmer seas, 
where it may often be seen swimming with its snout 
raised above the surface of the water, a fact probably 
due to its being made buoyant by the immense mass of 
fat it contains. When startled it will often assume a 
perpendicular posture, with half the body out of the 
water, to look and listen. While the animal is alive, 
this fat is fluid, and when the whale is killed a hole is 
made in the outer and upper part of the head, and the 
liquid baled out with buckets. It solidifies on cooling, 
and being afterwards refined, assumes that beautifully 



322 



TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



white crystallised appearance which spermaceti presents. 
The cachalot feeds mainly on cuttle-fishes, but also eats 
true fishes, even of considerable size. 

The bottle-nosed whale, or hyperoodon, is a cinious 
form which has only two teeth in the front of the lower 
jaw, and these are concealed in the gum. It agrees with 
the sperm whale in carrying a large quantity of spermaceti 
yielding oil, in the upper part of its head, and blubber 
producing sperm oil. It attains a length of thirty feet, 
though females do not exceed twenty-four feet. Captain 
Gray tells us that these whales are occasionally met 
with westward, near the Shetland Isles, in March, and 
across the Atlantic Ocean until the ice is reached, 
near the margin of which they are found in the greatest 
numbers ; but they are seldom seen among it. They are 
also to be met with from the entrance of Hudson's 
Straits and up Davis's Straits as far as 70° North latitude, 
and down the east side round Cape Farewell, all round 
Iceland, north along the Greenland ice to 77° l^orth 
latitude, and also to 19° East longitude. From the fact 
that they are not seen in summer further south than a 
day's sail from the ice, it would appear that they migrate 
south in the autumn, and north again in the spring. 
They are gregarious in their habits, going in herds of 
from four to ten. It is rare to see more than the latter 
number together, although many different herds are 
frequently in sight at the same time. The adult males 
very often go by themselves, but young bulls, cows, and 
calves, with an old male as a leader, are sometimes seen 
together. They are very unsuspicious, coming close 
alongside a ship, round about and underneath the boats, 
until their curiosity is satisfied. The herd never leaves 
a wounded companion so long as it is alive, but they 
desert it immediately when dead, and if another can 



WHALES AND MERMAIDS 323 

be harpooned before the one previously struck is killed, 
the hunters will often capture a whole herd, frequently 
taking ten, and sometimes fifteen, before the hold on them 
is lost. They come from every point of the compass 
toward the struck one in the most mysterious manner. 
They have great endurance, and are very difficult to kill, 
seldom taking less than from three hundred to four 
hundred fathoms of line, and stray, full-grown males 
will run out seven hundred fathoms, remaining under 
water for the long period of two hours, coming to the 
surface again as fresh as if they had never been away ; 
and if they are relieved of the weight by the lines being 
hauled in off them before they receive a second harpoon 
and a well-placed lance or two, it often takes hours 
to kill them. They never die without a hard struggle, 
lashing the sea white about them, leaping out of the 
water, striking the boats with their tails, running against 
them with their heads, and sometimes staving the planks 
in, and freequently towing two heavy whale-boats about 
after them with great rapidity. The young are black, the 
old light brown, and the very old almost yellow. The 
jaws, front of the head, and a band round the neck, white. 
The belly greyish white. Their tails are not notched in 
the centre as are those of most other whales. They can 
leap many feet out of the water, even having time while in 
the air to turn round their heads and look about them, 
taking the water head first, and not falling helplessly 
into it sideways, like the larger whales. A full-grown 
specimen will yield two tons of oil, besides two hundred- 
weight of spermaceti. They live on cuttle-fishes. Certain 
allied species from a small group characterised by having 
a considerable sized tooth on either side of the lower 
jaw. One of these, named after Mr. Layard, has a pair 
which, as age advances, become very long, narrow, flat, 



324 



TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



curved teeth, like a pair of bony straps, that at last 
curve inward over the upper jaw, the movements of 
which they must hamper. These whales have the bony 
support of the upper jaw in the form of a long, cylin- 
drical bone, or " rostrum," denser than ivory, and such 
structures, more or less mutilated, are frequently found 
fossil in Pliocene strata. 

A most curious Arctic cetacean is the " narwhal," or 
sea unicorn, the latter name having been given to it on 
account of an enormous tusk which the males develop. 
The length from head to the end of the tail, without 




THE NARWHAL. 

the tusk, is about fifteen feet, but the tusk itself often 
attains a length of seven or eight feet The head is 
short and rounded and the paddles very broad. In 
colour it is dark grey above, white below, and the whole 
body is marbled or spotted with blackish, or more or less 
dark, grey. It feeds on small fishes, cuttle-fishes, and 
crab-like animals. It has a few irregular rudimentary 
teeth, but besides them two elongated teeth lie horizon- 
tally within the upper jaw in the female. In the male 
one of these, usually the left one, becomes enormously 
developed, jutting straight outward from the front of 
the head like a great horn. It is marked with spiral 
grooves and ridges, and tapers gradually to a point. 



WHALES AND MERMAIDS 325 

Sometimes, but rarely, both teeth are thus developed. 
The narwhal is seldom to be met with south of 65° North 
latitude, but it has at least visited the British coasts 
three times : once in 1678 it entered the Eirth of Forth, 
in 1800 it came near Boston in Lincolnshire, and in 
1808 another visited Shetland. In the Middle Ages it 
seems that the tusks of these animals were regarded as 
unicorns' horns, and therefore, on account of the great 
medical virtues attributed to them, fragments would 
sometimes fetch more than ten times their weight in 
gold. Old legends assert that the unicorn, when he 
goes to drink, first dips his horn in the water to purify 
it, and that other beasts delay to quench their thirst till 
the unicorn has thus sweetened the water. 

Scoresby describes narwhals as extremely playful, 
frequently elevating their horns and crossing them with 
each other as in fencing, but they have never been 
known to strike and pierce the bottoms of ships as 
swordfish often do. The blubber is usually about three 
inches in thickness and amounts to nearly half a ton in 
weight. 

The beluga, or white whale, is a handsome animal of 
the Arctic Seas and American coast, as far south, at 
least, as the river St. Lawrence, which it ascends to a 
considerable distance. It is about twelve feet long. In 
the year 181 5 one was observed for three months 
swimming in the Firth of Forth. When met with in 
" schools " (for they are gregarious animals), they are 
not at all shy, but often follow ships in herds of thirty 
or forty, and form a remarkable sight from the beautiful 
white colour of the adult animals as they leap and 
gambol in the midst of a calm, dark sea. The flesh 
has been said to be fairly good eating. In the beluga 
a,nd all the cetaceans which remain to be noticed, 



326 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

there are teeth in the upper as well as in the lower 
jaw. 

The grampus is a very powerful and ferocious beast, 
which ranges the ocean from Greenland to New Zealand, 
and sometimes attains a length of twenty feet. It may 
be known when seen swimming by its dorsal fin, which 
is narrow and very high. Grampuses are the only 
cetaceans which habitually prey on warm-blooded animals. 
Indeed, this species is the most voracious and destructive 
inhabitant of the ocean. Eschricht found in a large 
specimen, the stomach of which measured 6 feet by 4, the 
bodies of various seals, flayed and so twisted that they 
had to be extricated one by one to count them. There 
were also porpoises in it, though the body of only one 
was entire. Altogether it contained the remains of 
thirteen seals and thirteen porpoises, besides one very 
small seal. But grampuses devour fish as well as warm- 
blooded animals, and among the members of their own 
order they will even attack whales, combining in packs 
to hunt down and destroy them, as wolves combine to 
hunt down and destroy different kinds of cattle. On the 
north-west coast of America grampuses have been known 
to seize and bear away a whale which had been captured 
by whalers, in spite of all their efforts to prevent them. 

Many fabulous tales have been told of the grampus, 
and one of them relates to their practice of attacking 
whales. It has been said, for example, that they hunt 
the whale in order to gratify a somewhat refined and 
luxurious taste for " whale tongue." They have been said 
expressly to v\^orry and harass their huge victim for the 
purpose of making him, in his agony, open his mouth. 
Then the grampus was said to dart instantly upon its 
tongue, seize it and tear it out, in order to enjoy so 
delicious a morsel. 



WHALES AND MERMAIDS 327 

The common porpoise is, of course, by far the best 
known of the British cetacea. When full-grown it 
attains a length of five or six feet. It may every now 
and then be seen in the river Thames, where it has 
ascended to Kichmond, and it has also reached Neuilly, 
on the Seine. It frequents the coasts of the United 
States as well as those of Europe, but it rarely passes 
through the Straits of Gibraltar. It is very destructive 
of fish, feeding voraciously on mackerel, pilchard, and 
heri-ings. Such is its eagerness in pursuit of the last 
named that it is often caught by fishermen in their 
herring nets. At one time it was commonly eaten both 
in France and England, and was deemed a valuable addi- 
tion to the table on a day of abstinence. Malcolm TV. 
of Scotland granted to the monastery of Dunfermline 
the porpoises caught in its vicinity. 

As we have before mentioned, roast porpoise figured in 
the banquet given by King Richard II., in Westminster 
Hall, on the day of his coronation, which happened to be 
a Friday, so that no " flesh meat " could be partaken of 
at it. It was esteemed in England as late as the time 
of Queen Ehzabeth, and was eaten with a sauce of bread- 
crumbs and vinegar. Its skin is sometimes used as leather, 
and is valued for its strength, while its blubber furnishes 
oil. 

The porpoise is gregarious, and most persons who live 
near the coast must often have observed its gambols. 
On the approach of a storm, and even in the middle of 
one, they seem to revel in the waves, frequently showing 
their black backs above the surface, and often throwing 
themselves clean out of the water in a vigorous leap. 
Two which were taken in Wareham River about 181 7, 
yielded sixteen gallons of oil. One of them was found 
to have milk, which, when tasted, was declared to be .salt 



328 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

and fishy. In 1820 three more were driven right up the 
same river to the town of Wareham. Then a fence was 
put across the river, both above and below them, in 
order that they might be exhibited. They plunged 
violently, however, and their cries — which they continued 
during the night as well as during the day — were so dis- 
tressing, that after the third day of their captivity they 
were taken from the water, killed, and cut up. 

In the porpoise, as in the right whale, the seven neck 
bones unite together. The stomach is divided into three 
chambers, thus reminding us of some of the even-toed 
ungulates. The brain is very large and very broad, and 
is grooved over the surface in a complex pattern. The 
nasal passages which are, as in all air-breathing animals, 
double in the skull, unite and open on the convex surface 
of the head by a single external aperture. The canal 
which passes from the upper surface of the skull to the 
exterior, is dilated into certain chambers which have 
elastic and muscular walls, by which means the forcible 
ejection of the breath — i.e., the "spouting" — is the more 
readily effected. 

The name " porpoise " seems to be derived from the 
French porc-poisson, or the Italian porco and pesce. Its 
Erench name marsouin, on the other hand, corresponds 
with the old German word " marsuin," which is the same 
as the German " meerschweui," which is " sea-hog " in 
English. 

The bay porpoise of the Pacific United States is one of 
the smallest of the cetacea. 

The pilot-whale, or round-headed porpoise, remark- 
able as it is for the shape of its head, is still more re- 
markable for the length of its paddle, or pectoral fin. 
It is not that the parts answering to our upper arm and 
our forearm are lengthened : it is the diajits which are 



WHALES AND MERMAIDS 329 

so long, at least the second and third of them. The 
second, which is the longest, contains no less than twelve 
or thirteen bones, while the third has nine. There is 
nothing like this elsewhere in the whole class of beasts. 
Even the long fingers of the bats never have more bones 
than have our own fingers. 

As to the head, it is very projecting and rounded in 
front, a fact due to the presence of a great cushion of fat 
on the anterior part of the upper jaw and in front of the 
blow-hole (or single external aperture) of the nasal 




THE ROUND-HEADED PORPOISB. 

passages. The animal is of a deep rich black, except the 
throat and belly, which are white. It is very widely 
distributed from the North Atlantic to Australia, and it 
has been so often observed that its habits are pretty well 
known. It will eat herrings, ling, and such creatures, 
but its favourite food consists of cuttle-fishes. The 
round-headed porpoise is a very gregarious animal, and, 
very unlike the grampus, is mild and inoffensive as well 
as sociable. Their sociability is fatal to them, since as 
soon as one is attacked or driven on shore they instinct- 
ively rush together and blindly follow the stranded 
individual till they are stranded also. The inhabitants 



330 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

of the Orkney, Shetland, and Faroe islands and the 
Icelanders, get an abundant supply of oil from them. 
On the appearance of a shoal, the men of the locality 
assemble, and the sailors try to get to seaward of them 
and then drive them into shore by shouts and missiles. 
It seems that the cries of distress of the first victims 
further aid in attracting others to their vicinity. In 
1809 a shoal of eleven hundred were thus taken in 
Iceland. In 18 14 a hundred and fifty were driven 
into Belta Sound, in Shetland, and there despatched. 
The short- finned roundhead, frequents the Atlantic 
Fig. 83. 




THE COMMON DOLPHIN , 



coast of the Middle and Southern United States, while 
Scammon's roundhead is found off the Pacific coast of 
North America, where it assembles in large " schools,'* 
and often enters bays and lagoons to feed on small fish. 

The dolphin, a creature from six to eight feet long, 
pertains to a group of cetaceans which differs from that 
to which the porpoise belongs in that, instead of having 
a head rounded in shape, their jaws present the appear- 
ance of a long, narrow beak, like that of many birds. It 
is an animal renowned both in classical and mediaeval 
literature. It was a sacred fish to the Greeks, religiously 
venerated because when Apollo appeared to the Cretans 
and obliged them to settle on the coast of Delphis, he 



WHALES AND MERMAIDS 331 

did so under the form of a dolphin. Therefore it was 
that at his world-renowned oracle of Delphi he was 
worshipped under the symbol of that cetacean. It was 
also credited with a warm attachment to mankind, 
readily lending its aid in cases of shipwreck and disasters 
of various kinds. Thus Phalantus, the founder of 
Tarentum, when wrecked on the Italian coast, was, we 
are told, carried to shore by a dolphin. No doubt 
many readers also know Ovid's tale about the musician 
Arion, who, when about to be thrown overboard by 
sailors who coveted his possessions, begged that he might 
be permitted to play a last melody, which attracted 
admiring dolphins, one of which bore him safely back 
to Tanarus. 

" Secure he sits, and with harmonious strains 
Eequites his bearer for his friendly pains." 

Pliny also tells of a dolphin which daily carried a lad 
to and from his school, across Lake Lucrinus, in Cam- 
pania, and, after the lad's death, died of a broken heart ! 
The shield and sword of Ulysses are described as having 
borne the image of a dolphin, and it figures on many 
ancient coins — though for the most part very incorrectly 
— ^with a rounded head and spiny fins. Yet, on an 
ancient Syracusan coin in the British Museum the 
creature is very faithfully depicted. It shows a spiny 
back also in heraldry, in which science it is reckoned as 
'' the king of fishes." It appears in several coats-of- 
arms, and, amongst others, in that of Fitz-James, which 
bears " a dolphin naiant emhoioed,^^ heraldic terms, denot- 
ing it as " swimming with a curved back." 

The name of dolphin, in French Dauphin, was also 
adopted as the title of the eldest son of His most Christian 



332 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

Majesty, the king of France and of Navarre, it is said in 
the following way : The Counts of Grenoble, who in the 
ninth century were feudatories of the kingdom of Aries, 
subsequently became, as Counts of Yienne, independent, 
and Count Guy YIII. became surnamed " Le Dauphin " 
because he wore one on his helmet and shield, and his 
territory was called " Dauphine." The last of that 
dynasty, having lost his only son, gave up his sove- 
reignty to King Philippe of Yalois in 1349 and became 
a friar. From that time the king's eldest son was 
known by this title, as the English king's was by that of 
Prince of Wales. 

The flesh of the dolphin, like that of the porpoise, 
used to be eaten in Lent, and the celebrated Dr. Caius 
of Cambridge says that in his time it was considered a 
delicacy. 

Its voice consists of a low murmur. It has but a 
single young one at a time, which the female treats with 
great tenderness and care. Its milk is abundant and rich. 

Dolphins are very voracious and eat large quantities 
of fish. They often approach fishermen's nets, and they 
doubtless sometimes follow ships for the sake of food. 
They swim with great velocity, and can shoot ahead of 
vessels and round them although they may at the time 
be scudding rapidly before the breeze. 

The common dolphin is found in the Mediterranean 
and Atlantic, while closely allied forms inhabit the 
Australian seas and the North Pacific. 

A very curious cetacean inhabits the Ganges, Brahma- 
putra, and the Indus. It is found even in the smallest 
tributaries of those rivers, where there is water enough 
for it to swim, but it never passes out into the open sea. 
It attains eight feet in length, and is known in Bengal as 



WHALES AND MERMAIDS 333 

the soosoo. It is blind, and gropes about mth its long 
beak-like snout in muddy waters for the small fishes, 
shi'imps, and crabs on which it feeds. 

Another exclusively river cetacean, named Inia, is 
found in the Upper Amazon and its tributaries. It 
is about seven feet long, and has an elongated beak. 
A still longer beak is possessed by a similar creature 
which is found at the mouth of the Bio de la Plata, and 
has been named Pontoporia. It is about the smallest 
of the cetaceans, and does not exceed five feet in length, 
but it has from fifty to sixty teeth on either side of each 
jaw. 

Such are the more noticeable existing forms of 
toothed and toothless whales. Immense quantities of 
allied forms have been found fossil in later tertiary 
strata, especially in Belgium and the east of England. 

The illustrious American naturalist. Dr. Harlan, 
found a tooth in the Eocene strata of Alabama, to which 
he gave the name Basilosaurus, but Sir Bichard Owen 
pronounced it to belong to a beast, which — from the 
form of the tooth — he named Zeuglodon. Ilerr Kock also 
found fossil in America, many years ago, a number of 
bones of the backbone of some animal. These he con- 
cocted into an immense creature 100 feet long, which he 
called the Ilydrarchus. It was taken to Europe, when 
the great John Miiller saw it at Berlin. He gave a 
correct description of it, showing that it was really but 
60 feet long at the most, as also that its backbone was 
formed like that of cetaceans. It was a zeuglodon. 
Now we know that the skull and teeth of that animal 
are very seal-like, and there is much reason to believe 
that, altogether, this enigmatical creature was much more 
like a seal than it was like any kind of whale. 



334 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

This consideration leads us to make a few remarks as 
to the origin of the cetacea. Whales, whether toothed 
or not toothed, have certainly nothing to do with mer- 
maids or sirenia. The zeuglodon seems to point to a 
direct connection between them and the seals, but the 
cetacean-like structure of that creature's backbone may- 
be merely a resemblance induced by similar habitual 
needs and no sign of real affinity. 

That the whales, like the mermaids, have descended 
from some four-legged beasts, is shown by the fact of their 
possessing the rudiments of hind limbs, just as the rudi- 
mentary teeth of unborn whalebone whales show that 
such whales had animals with ordinary teeth for their 
ancestors, and that their wonderful " baleen " is a com- 
paratively modern improvement. Wherever they come 
from they must have been evolved since the deposition 
of the chalk, as it is incredible that had they existed 
before that period, none of their remains should have 
been preserved in the cretacean rocks. The presence of 
the soosoo and of inia in rivers only, points to the 
possibility of all the cetacea having descended from 
river-inhabiting species, while Sir William Flower, who 
has made the whales his special study, deems it probable 
that they are descendants of some more or less hog- 
like creature. There are, indeed, many anatomical 
points of resemblance between the porpoise and the 
hog. 

A word may be said in conclusion as to the wonderful 
braiQ of the porpoise and other cetaceans. It cannot 
evidently be a sign of the possession of intellectual 
faculties beyond those of other brutes. WTien we recall 
to mind the fact that the sluggish, torpid manatee has a 
very simple brain, it seems that the large and richly 



WHALES AND MERMAIDS 335 

convoluted condition of the very active and vivacious 
porpoise, may be due to the need of a nervous supply 
sufficient to carry on the constantly vigorous movements 
of such a warm-blooded inhabitant of the ocean. This 
thought may serve as a caution against that hasty attri- 
bution of a direct connection between intellectual power 
and the development of certain superficial parts of the 
brain, which has been so widely diifused a belief of our 
own days. 



XII 

THE OTHER BEASTS 

With the present essay we shall bring to a close this 
series o£ sketches, and will herein endeavour to collect 
as it were into a focus, such light as we have been 
able to obtain with respect to the various groups of 
animals which have served as our types. The informa- 
tion as yet conveyed has necessarily been fragmentary. 
It is time to present it as an orderly whole, l^hese dozen 
chapters have been intended to serve as an introduction to 
a knowledge of zoology, and especially of the leading 
section of that primary division of animals to which we 
ourselves belong. That primary division is made up of 
all those creatures which have either a " back-bone " or 
a representative thereof, formed of gristle or some softer 
substance. As most of such creatures possess, as we do, 
a spinal column or back- bone, formed of a chain of small 
bones, each of which is termed a " vertebra," this whole 
primary division of animals is spoken of as the "verte- 
brate " division, or the division " vertebrata." This 
division is often also called a " sub-kingdom," because it 
and the other "sub-kingdoms" together include aU 
animals, and animals taken as one great whole, have 
been fancifully regarded as a kingdom. The Animal 
Kingdom being thus opposed to, and contrasted with, the 
whole mass of plants or the Vegetable Kingdom. Besides 
the "sub-kingdom," or primary division, of "vertebrate" 



THE OTHER BEASTS 337 

or " back-boned " animals, there are various other such 
primary divisions, as for example the sub-kingdom of 
molluscs or mollusca (squids, snails, oysters, &c.); the 
sub-kingdom of creatures with jointed legs or arthropoda 
(crabs, shrimps, insects, spiders, scorpions, hundred-legs, 
&c.); the sub-kingdom of worms or vermes; that of star- 
fishes or echinoderma, and so on. But with all these we 
have here nothing further to do ; we have but to recog- 
nise tho fact that our own sub-kingdom is but one of a 
certain number of other such primary groups. 

In our essay on the opossum,* the fact was roughly 
indicated that the division of " back-boned animals " was 
made up of certain classes — namely, mammals, birds, 
reptiles, and fishes ; but in that on the bull-frog, it was 
further pointed out that frogs, efts, and their allies, 
should more properly constitute a group by themselves, 
and so constitute a distinct class, " batrachia." 

Now these five classes may be taken as falling into 
two sections which are very distinct, but which it will 
here suffice to characterise (apart from exceptional leg- 
less forms) as, (i) those having limbs made up of arm 
and hand, or leg and foot respectively, and (2) those the 
limbs of which are not so made up. The limbs of all 
beasts, birds, repdles, and batrachians, are thus com- 
posed, but those of all other back-bo aed animals are not 
thus composed ; therefore, they are not so composed in 
fishes, and so fishes are not included amongst the animals 
noticed in these essays. 

The groups of the class of birds, have been more or 
less indicated in our study of the turkey,! those of the 
class of reptiles have been considered with tne rattle- 
snake, t and those of the class batrachia in our notice 
of the bull-frog. § 

* See p. 42. t See p. 66. X See p. 122. Sea p. 96. 

Y 



33? TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

But the class which is naturally most interesting to 
us is the class to which we ourselves belong, the class 
Mammalia. When treating of the " opossum " we showed * 
how the class of beasts was divisible into a number of 
orders which could be arranged in three distinct groups; 
one such group (the lowest) included only the platypus 
and echidna, which together constitute by themselves 
the order Monotremata. The second group was consti- 
tuted by the pouched beasts or the placental mammals 
alone, which form the single order Marsuinalia, while all 
other mammals which make up a variety of orders, con- 
stitute the third division of placental mammals. Of 
these we have drawn attention to the apes and the bats, 
the carnivorous beasts,! the seals and the sea-bears, the 
hoofed-beasts, the sirenia and cetacea,J and the sloths, 
ant-eaters, and armadillos. A few groups yet remain to 
be noticed, and to them we devote this final article. 
They are (i) the lemurs; (2) the rodents; and (3) the 
insect-eating beasts. Having said what we have to say 
about these, w^e shall then be in a position to survey 
and summarise what knowledge we may have gained 
about that whole class, which includes man and beast — 
the class Mammalia. 

As to the lemurs,§ we must premise that the term 
may be taken in a wide or in a narrow sense. There are 
creatures to which that term properlj^ and specially 
applies, while there are various others more or less dif- 
ferent forms, which are also sometimes called lemurs^ 
but which are but distant relations of the animals, to 
which the term specially applies. To avoid ambiguity, 
we shall henceforth speak of the entire group (of lemui's 

* See pp. 43 and 62. f "Racoon," see p. 211. 

+ '• Whales and Mermaids," see p. 303. 
§ "Monkeys," see pp. 7, 33 and 34. 






THE OTHER BEASTS 



339 



proper, together with their more or less distant relatives) 
as " lemuroids " reserving the word lemurs for the 
animals most properly so called. 
Fig. 84. 




THE RING-TAILED LEMUR. 



Such true lemurs are animals of about the size of a cat, 
with sharp-pointed muzzles and long tails well clothed 
with hair, while a soft thick fur invests the whole body. 
Their legs are not much longer than their arms, while 
each extremity is, as in the case of the monkeys, modi- 



340 



TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



fied to servo as a hand, tlie great toe as well as the thumb 
being opposable to the other digits. The thumb is well 
developed, but the second or index digit is rather short. 

Fig, 




THE SHORT-TAILED INDRIS 



These animals are very common in our menageries, one 
of the handsomest being known as the ring- tailed lemur, 
because its tail is marked with alternate rings of black 
and white, its body being clothed with fur of a delicate 



THE OTHER BEASTS 



Fig. 86. 



341 




"^^^ 



THE LONG-TAILED INDRIS. 



342 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

grey colour. It is not only an extremely active and 
graceful animal, but also a very gentle one, making an 
excellent pet (Fig. 84). 

All the lemurs are inhabitants exclusively of the 
Island of Madagascar, where they live in small troops 
in the woods, which they make resound with their cries; 
they are excellent climbers, but, when on the ground, 
remain on all fours. In sleeping they wrap their long 
tails round their bodies. Their food consists of fruits, 
eggs, young birds, and insects, and they seek it by day, 
though they are most active towards evening. They 
have one or two young at a birth, which at first are 
nearly naked, and are carried about by the mother, cling- 
ing to her belly and almost coacealed by the long hair 
which clothes it. Lemurs have teeth much like those 
of monkeys, and like them and ourselves have but four 
cutting teeth in the middle of each jaw, though it looks 
at first sight as if there were six in the lower one, since 
the lower eye-teeth are formed like the cutting-teeth 
which are adjacent to them. 

Madagascar also possesses a curious group of lemu- 
roids called indris — short-tailed, long- tailed, and v;oolly 
— which have only two cutting-teeth in the lower jaw. 

The short-tailed indris is the giant amongst lemuroids, 
its head and body together measuring two feet. It lives 
in the forests of the eastern part of Madagascar, going 
about in small parties of four or five individuals. Its 
hind legs are much longer than its fore Hmbs, and its 
great toes are very large, and on the ground it assumes 
an upright attitude (Fig. 85). 

Of long-tailed indris there are at least three different 
kinds, and one or other of these species is to be found all 
over Madagascar, living in small troops of six or eight. 
They are also large animals which are veiy arboreal, 



THE OTHER BEASTS 343 

leaping from tree to tree without apparent effort, some- 
times for a distance of ten yards. On the ground they 
^o erect, but effect their progression there in a very 
kidicrous fashion. Standing upright, they hold their 
arms over their heads, and then make a series of short 
jumps ; they are gentle animals, but somewhat stupid. 
They sleep at night and during the heat of the day, but 
are active morning and evening. Their food consists 
mainly of birds, flowers, and fruits (Fig. 86). 

Certain small nocturnal lemuroids also inhabit 
Madagascar. They are of small size, some being smaller 
than a rat. Their most interesting structural peculi- 
arity, of a permanent nature, lies in their ankles. 
Instead of these parts consisting (as they do in ourselves, 
monkeys, and almost all other beasts) of a group of 
short bones only, two of them are elongated and lie side 
by side, so adding an additional segment to the limb — one 
intermediate between the leg and the foot. They have 
also another interesting peculiarity of a temporary nature, 
this is their tendency to accumulate a quantity of fat in 
certain parts of the body, especially at the root of the 
tail, which becomes of an exceedingly large size. 
This peculiarity of structure is related to a peculiarity 
of habit : for during the dry season they retire into the 
holes of trees, coil themselves up and pass the whole 
period in sleep, as bats with us hibernate in winter. 
When, with the advent of the rainy season, they rouse 
themselves again, their fat has disappeared : having 
served to nourish them during their period of torpor. 

All the lemuroids yet noted are inhabitants of Mada- 
gascar, but another group, called galagos, are none of 
them found within that island, but all of them are exclu- 
sively inhabitants of Africa south of the Sahara, they 
are active only at night when they feed on fruits, 



344 



TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



insects, eggs, and small birds. Their size varies from 
that of a small rabbit to that of a large mouse. They 




THE SENEGAL GALACxO. 



THE OTHER BEASTS 



345 



have very large eyes and ears, with long tails, and are 
clothed in soft woolly fur. Habitually they live in trees, 
but when they descend to the ground they progress by 
long jumps as kangaioos do, their power to effect these 




THE SLENDER LORIS. 



depends on the fact that two of their ankle bones are 
even more elongated than in the small Madagascar 
lemuroids last noted. 

A most singular lemuroid is the slender loris — a crea- 
ture with no trace of a tail, and limbs which have much 
the proportions of our own as to length, though they 



346 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

are extremely attenuated. The animal therefore looks 
like a very small dwarf (about the size of a squirrel) 
reduced almost to a skeleton. It inhabits only Southern 
India and Ceylon. Its index finger is exceedingly short, 
but its eyes are very large indeed. It is regarded 
by the natives of India as a remedy for ophthalmia, on 
which account it constitutes an article of commerce in 
the bazaars of Madras. It is a slow-moving creature, 
strictly nocturnal, and feeding on young shoots and 
leaves, insects, lizards, eggs, and small birds. It is also 
said to be extremely fond of honey. 

Another eastern lemuroid is the slow loris, which 
ranges from Cochin China to Sumatra and Borneo. It 
is generally like the slender loris, except that it is much 
stouter. Excessively slow in its movements and sleeping 
by da}'-, it creeps about at night in the forests it inhabits, 
never jumping or running, but always clinging with 
great tenacity to the branches. The arrangement of 
the tendons of it^. feet is such that the mere weight of 
its body suffices to keep its toes strongly bent, and 
firmly clasping any object from wliich it may hang. 
Its food consists oi fruit, young shoots, insects, and 
birds, and it will seize such of the last as its noiseless 
approach at night may enable it to surprise when they 
are at roost. 

Two alhed kinds exist in Africa, one of these, the 
angwantibo, inhabits Old Calabar. The other is the potto, 
which is interesting as being one of the first lemuroid s 
discovered. One, Bosman, a traveller, met with it during 
his voyage to Guinea, and described it in the year 1705. 
After that, it was never again seen by a European for 
twenty years, and it was only first fully described in 
1830. Both these African forms are very like the slow 
loris, and resemble it in their habits, but they both have 



THE OTHER BEASTS 



3<7 



the index finger reduced to a mere rudiment. It is 
especially rudimentary in the potto ; and this forms no 
slight argument against Darwinism, that is, against the 
doctrine that species have been formed by natural selec- 

FlG. 89. 




THE POTTO. 

tion. For how is it possible that the potto's life could 
have been repeatedly saved on account of its not possess- 
ing an index finger ? The Indian Archipelago, that is 
to say, Sumatra, Borneo, Celebes, and the Philippine 
Islands, possess a singular little animal, not so big as 
the common squirrel, which is a great contrast to the 



348 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

slow-moving lemuroids last noticed. This little animal 
is the tarsier. To a certain extent it resembles the 
galagos. It has large eyes and ears, and a long tail 
tufted at the end, but it carries to a yet greater degree 

Fig. 90. 




THE TARSIER. 



the prolongation of the two ankle bones, so that there is 
a most distinct thin elongated segment of the leg be- 
tween the shin and the foot. This gives the little animal 
great power of jumping, and in that way it moves 
about actively at night, in pursuit of insects and other 
small animals on which it largely feeds. It has but 



I 



THE OTHER BEASTS 



349 



two cutting teeth in the lower jaw, and though there 
are four in the upper one, the two middle ones are large 
and closely applied one against the other. 

The last lemuroid to be here noticed is a still 



Fig. 91. 




THE AYE- AYE. 



more exceptional one. It is called the aye-aye, and is 
found nowhere but in Madagascar. There it was dis- 
covered by Sounerat in 1780, and was described in 
Buffon's " Natural History " from a skin which Sonnerat 



356 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

presented to the King's Cabinet. That skin has survived 
all the tumults of the Revolution, and it constituted the 
only evidence of the existence of such a beast, for 
more than half a century. At last, in 1844, a second 
specimen was brought to Paris, and this was followed by 
others, and live ones were then obtained for the Zoolo- 
gical Gardens in London, where one may now be seen. 
The aye-aye is about the size of a cat, and has long dark 
hair, a long tail, a round head, and very large ears. 
The hind foot is like that of the lemuroids, but its 
hands have long fingers with pointed claws, and the 
middle finger of each hand is long, out of all propor- 
tion and more slender than the others. 

It is a strictly nocturnal animal, passing the day in 
a round nest formed of leaves and fixed between the 
forked branches of some tree. Its food has not been 
certainly ascertained. It has been said to feed merely 
on grubs which live in the wood of trees. Its large 
ears have been represented as enabling it to hear the 
grubs there at work, while its large teeth could 
gnaw the wood quickly and so lay them bare. Then as 
such grubs retreated deeper from the light of day, it 
was said to introduce its long and slender middle finger 
into their burrow and hook them out. But observations 
made on aye-ayes in confinement do not confirm this 
representation, but rather point to their supporting 
themselves on the succulent juices of plants. Their 
teeth certainly seem to indicate a vegetable diet, and 
they are formed like those of the animals next to be 
here noticed, namely the rodents. There are but two 
cutting teeth in either jaw, but these are very large, 
and those of each jaw applied closely, one against the 
other ; they are, moreover, separated from the grinding 
teeth by a long toothless space, there being no eye-teabh 



I 



THE OTHER BEASTS 351 

at all, tliougli such exist in each of the jaws of all the 
other lemuroids. 

On account of these teeth, the true nature of this 
creature was long misunderstood. It was taken to be 
really one of the gnawing animals, or rodents, and was 
so classed even by the great Cuvier himself. But what 
are lemurs ? As we before pointed out,* they have no essen- 
tial relationship to the apes, though they have long been 
classed with them, and though it is convenient that they 
should so remain, for they have no known more essen- 
tial relationship to any other group of beasts. Some 
tertiary fossils have indeed been supposed to indicate a 
connection between them and hoofed quadrupeds, but 
we regard this as being most problematical. The resem- 
blance, which exists between our own species and the 
group of apes, was insisted on in the very commence- 
ment of the first of these essays, and since zoological 
classification reposes exclusively upon characteristics of 
bodily structure, man, when merely considered zoologi- 
cally, must be taken as a member of that order to which 
the apes belong. The difference between him and them, 
in this respect, is small indeed, when compared with 
that which exists between apes and lemuroids. On that 
account, if both lemuroids and apes are to be classed in 
one order, such order must be divided into two sub- 
orders, in one of which will stand man and the apes, 
while the lemuroids must occupy the other. 

Of the gnawing animals, or Rodents, that well-known 
American animal, the beaver, may stand for us as a type. 
It is in m.uch danger of extinction through the spread of 
population, though the cessation of the fashion of beaver- 
hats must tell somewhat in its favour. In the early days of 
this century, when that fashion was in vogue, some 
* See ante, p. 34. 



352 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

200,000 skins were exported annually to Europe. The 
European variety has become almost extinct, save where 
it is protected by the Emperor of Austria; though 
isolated pairs are met with in Germany and Russia. It 
was once an inhabitant of Great Britain, as some Welsh 
names of places would alone suffice to prove, were there 
not also positive testimony of it, such as that of Giraldas 
Cambrensis. 

The European beaver never makes dams like those for 
which its American cousin is so renowned, yet we know, 
from Albertus Magnus, that it did so in the thirteenth 
century. The American kind was recently imported 
into the Island of Bute by its owner (the Marquess of 
Bute), and there they throve wonderfully, and formed 
their dams in true American fashion. 

The amazing facility the beaver possesses for felling 
trees is due to the power of its jaws and teeth. Of these 
there are, as in the aye-aye, two large cutting teeth 
above and two below, separated by a toothless interspace 
from the grinding teeth behind them. Each cutting 
tooth is protected in front by a coating of very dense 
enamel, so that at its summit it wears away less quickly in 
front than behind, and thus a sharp, chisel-like cutting 
edge is constantly preserved. 

Another well-known and renowned American rodent 
is the prairie marmot, commonly called the "prairie dog.'' 
It is a stoutly built little animal with a short tail, of 
very social habits, feeding on buffalo-grass, and living in 
large communities in burrows, so closely placed that it is 
very dangerous work riding across the plains they 
inhabit. Their habitations are perilously shared by a 
small owl, and less peacefully by rattle-snakes, which 
latter doubtless frequent them in order to feed on their 
young. 



THE OTHER BEASTS 



353 



Closely allied to it are the European marmots of the 
Alps, which used to be carried about by itinerant Swiss 
boys. As to them we learn from Professor Blasius that 
" they live high up in the snowy regions of the mountains, 
generally preferring exposed cliffs, whence they may have 
a clear view of any approaching danger, for which, while 




THE PRAIRIE DOG. 

quietly basking in the sun, or actively running about 
in search of food, a constant watch is kept. When one 
of them raises the cry of warning, a loud piercing 
whistle well known to travellers in the Alps, they all 
instantly take to flight, and hide themselves in holes and 
crannies among the rocks, often not re-appearing at 
the entrance of their hiding-place until several hours 



354 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

have elapsed, and then frequently standing motionless 
on the look-out for a still longer period. Their food 
consists of the roots and leaves of various Alpine plants, 
which, like squirrels, they Hft to their mouths with their 
fore-paws. For their winter quarters they make a large 
round burrow, with but one entrance, and ending in a 
sleeping place thickly lined with hay. Here from ten to 
fifteen marmots will often pass the winter, all lying closely 
packed together, fast asleep, until the spring." 

The marmots are first cousins to the rodents most 
remarkable for their attractiveness. We recollect that 
one day when we were in the smoking-room of the 
Hotel d'Angleterre at E-ome, a discussion took place as to 
what was the most beautiful object in Nature. There 
were several exclamations of " a woman ! a woman ! " But 
a gentleman from Chicago said, with much deliberation, 
"Wal, I should say a squirrel!" Squirrels are the 
animals we now refer to, and they are to be found in all 
the warm and temperate regions of the globe, save 
Australia and Madagascar. They are most abundant in 
the Malayan region, where is to be found the giant of the 
group — ^the two-coloured squirrel — which is almost as 
large as a cat. In Borneo, on the other hand, there is 
one as small as a mouse. The European common squirrel 
ranges from Ireland to Japan, and from Italy to Lapland. 
There are altogether about seventy-five species of true 
squirrels, whereof fifteen are found in America. Flying 
squirrels, which are creatures formed like flying 
phalangers,* have the skin of the sides and flanks 
of the body extensible, and so capable of acting like a 
parachute. There are more than twenty-five kinds of 
them, yet only one species — but a most charming little 
one — is found in North America. 

* See ante, p. 46. 



THE OTHER BEASTS 355 

In West and Central Africa several species of beasts 
have been found which closely resemble flying squirrels, 
but have a number of large overlapping horny scales 
placed beneath the tail. On this account the name 
Anomalu7'us has been given them. 

Those beautiful little animals, the dormice, come near 
the squirrels. They are unrepresented in America, but 
have existed in Europe from the time of the Upper 
Eocene. There also may be mentioned a curious animal 
from West Africa called Lophiomys, which has, from its 
coloration, somewhat the appearance of a skunk. It is 
remarkable for having a great toe which can be opposed 
to the digits of the foot, and for having an outgrowth 
from the bones of the head, extending over the side of 
the face (beneath the skin) and forming a sort of double- 
walled skull, there, as in some frogs.* 

The very numerous family of rats and mice may be 
exemplified by that very beautiful little European animal 
the harvest mouse, the head and body of which scarcely 
exceed 2 J inches in length. It is very elegant in shape, 
of a reddish brown colour above, and the under parts 
pure white. It builds a round nest, about the size of a 
cricket ball, often attached to the stalks of wheat, and 
formed of dry grass. 

The ancient common rat of England, the black rat, 
has been almost exterminated by the brown rat, which 
seems to have come into England in the sixteenth 
century, the mouse and rat genus is the richest in 
species of any mammalian genus. 

There are one hundred and thirty different kinds, some 

or other of which are found in all parts of the Old World 

save Madagascar. There are none, however, which are 

naturally inhabitants of America. There, nevertheless, 

* See ante, p. 121 



356 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

is to be found the musk-rat or musquash, the head and 
body of which are together a foot long. Its feet are 
webbed, and it lives in lakes and rivers from the Rio 
Grande to the shores of the Arctic Seas. America also 
is the home of the elegant little creatures with small 
cheek-pouches — the vesper mice — such as the deer-mouse 
the wood-mouse, the golden mouse. These in the West 
will come and take up their abode in houses. 

Gerbils are elegant creatures witk large bright eyes 
and long tufted tails and very long hind legs, wherewith 
they can jump in kangaroo fashion. They range over 
the Old World. In the hamster of the Old World there 
are large cheek-pouches. 

The voles are Old World creatures, which differ from 
rats and mice by their blunt muzzle, heavier build and 
less graceful movements ; also by their smaller eyes and 
ears, and shorter limbs and tail. An allied form, 
Hydromys, exists in Australia, New Guinea and Tas- 
mania. 

The lemming of Norway is a sort of vole, very cele- 
brated on account of its sudden and marvellous migrations. 
When a conjuncture of favourable circumstances enables 
them to multiply to an enormous extent, a migratory 
instinct becomes developed in them, whereby they are 
led to descend to lower-lying lands than those they 
normally frequent. 

They migrate slowly and intermittently, journeying 
only by night, and increasing frequently as they go. 
Their journey may last for three years before they reach 
the sea coast, according to the route they may happen to 
have followed. When they reach the coast, they go on 
into the sea and so perish. As they journey along, they 
are preyed upon by bears, wolves, foxes, dogs, wild-cats, 
weasels, eagles, hawks and owls. They are also destroyed 



THE OTHER BEASTS 357 

by man, and even domestic animals, such as goats and 
reindeer will spring upon and kill them. Numbers also 
die of disease, but they never turn back, they proceed 
ever onwards to their ultimate destination. 

In Kussia and Asia there are two forms of mouse-like 
animals, specially modified for a subterranean life, having 
rudimentary external ears, and a short tail, and the 
claws of the fore-limbs greatly developed. In South- 
eastern Europe there is a still more completely sub- 

FiG. 93. 



THE MOLE-RAT. 



terranean rodent — the mole-rat, Spalax, which is 
further modified by having its eyes covered by the skin. 
An African mole-rat is called Bathyergus. Less com- 
pletely subterranean is the American pouched-rat or 
''pocket-gopher," which lives and burrows in the 
plains of the Mississippi, while allied fossorial forms 
are found in Canada, and America west of the Eocky 
Mountains. 

The jerboas are creatures with a kangaroo-like habit 
of progression. Their logs are very long, and the three 
middle-foot bones, which support their three toes, are 
anchylosed together into a sort of carj non-bone, as are 



358 



TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



the two middle-foot bones of the feet of most ruminants.* 
They are all Old World forms. 

A noted South American rodent is the oojpu, which 
attains a length of two feet. It inhabits the rivers in 
South America and feeds on aquatic plants. 



Fig. 94. 




THE JERBOA. 

The true " fretful porcupine " is an exclusively Old 
World form of rodent, which may be eaten at the 
Falcone Tavern at Rome. It extends south-eastwards to 
Borneo. In India it forms extensive burrows, often 
liv^ing socially and inflicting great damage on various 
crops. They never issue forth till after dark, but some 
* See "Bison," ante, p. 196. 



THE OTHER BEASTS 359 

times do not return home before sunrise. They will 
actively defend themselves, charging at their foes, and at 
the same time erecting their spines, so that dogs are often 
very severely injured, or even killed by them. There 
are some eight different species, and there are also four 

Fig. 95. 




THE TRI-COLOURED TREE-PORCUPINE. 

species of brush-tailed porcupines, each having a long 
tail with a tuft of spines towards its tip. 

In America, from Canada to Southern Brazil, we also 
meet with porcupines of a different kind. In Brazil 
there are true porcupines with a long prehensile tail in 
harmony with their arboreal habits. 

The Andes of Peru and Chili possess a rodent which 
may be said, as far as its extepior is concerned, to be the 



360 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

very opposite of a porcupine, for its fur is. the softest 
and most delicate known. This is the chinchilla, an ani- 
mal about ten inches long, with a tail half that length. 

The agoutis, the paca, and the cavies, amongst which 
is the guinea-pig, are also exclusively American species. 
Only American also are two more noteworthy forms. 
One of these is the so-called Patagonian cavy, which is 
rather larger than a hare, an animal to which it 
bears a decided resemblance from its long hind legs and 
mode of progression. 

The other form is the capybara, the giant of the 
rodent order. It is a stout bulky animal about 4 feet 
in length, and covered with coarse hair. These animals 
are to be mot with on the borders of rivers and lakes in 
South America. They hide themselves amongst reeds 
and other aquatic plants, and have little to fear save 
from the jaguars, which are said habitually to prey 
upon them, as also do the pumas. 

We will conclude this sketch of the great group of 
gnawing animals by a notice of the hare and its allies. 
These animals differ from all other rodents in having in 
the upper jaw a second and small pair of cutting teeth 
placed directly behind the large ones. 

Of hares and rabbits there are about twenty species 
spread over the northern hemisphere, one of them 
extending downwards to South America. 

The common hare is found all over Europe except 
Ireland, Norway and Sweden, and Northern Russia. 
There it is replaced by the mountain hare, which, excepb 
in Ireland, becomes snow white in winter, save the black 
tips of its ears. The rabbit affords one of the best — and 
worst — examples of the rapid diJffusion of a species in 
regions new to it, as in New Zealand, Australia and the 
Falkland Islands. 



THE OTHER BEASTS 361 

Closely allied to the hares and rabbits are creatures 
called picas, or tailless hares, of which there are about a 
dozen species. They live in holes amongst the rocks of 
the mountains of Northern Asia, those of the Kocky 
Mountains of America, and, one species, in South- 
eastern Europe. They are small animals, which are 
agile and shy, and have somewhat the appearance of 
guinea pigs. 

We must next pass on to the consideration of the 
order of insect-eating beasts (Insectivora) — the only 
order which we have now left unnoticed. It in- 
cludes the moles, shrews, and hedgehogs, with other 
forms less famiharly known. They all have teeth 
with sharp points well adapted for piercing the bodies of 
insects and very unlike those of rodents. In the spalax 
and some other gnawing animals just noticed, we have 
met with rodents specially modified for burrowing, 
with very strong claws to their fore- feet, without ex- 
ternal ears, and with eyes covered by the skin of the 
head. All these characters exist to the fullest degree in 
the true moles, which are the animals the most perfectly 
adapted to such a mode of life. They are confined to 
Europe and Asia, and there are some eight species of 
them. The common mole of England is found from that 
island to Japan, and down to the Himalayas. Its fore- 
limbs, with their claws, are exceedingly powerful, and 
moved by powerful muscles to give greater scope, for the 
origin of which the breast bone is keeled, as in the 
armadillo.* The tail is short and the body covered 
with a thick but short velvety fur. The mole feeds on 
earthworms and is most voracious. In captivity, it will 
eat any flesh or attack animals as big as itself. If two 
moles are confined together and have nothing to eat, the 

* See ante, p. 258. 



362 



TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



stronger one will eat the other. The mole can ST^im 
well, and burrow so rapidly in the earth, it may almost 
be said to fly through it. It makes a nest lined with 



Fig. 96. 




THE RUSSIAN DESMAN. 



dry grass or leaves, from which a regular system of 
passages issue forth. 

In America, representatives of the Old World moles 
are called star -moles, because a series of delicate pro- 



THE OTHER BEASTS 363 

cesses of skin radiate from the extremity of the muzzle. 
The general form of a star-mole is like the true mole, 
but its tail is longer and its hand less powerful. It makes 
tunnels in the ground like the mole of Europe. Three 
other species in the United States have the hind feet 
webbed. They form the genus Scalops. 

Two curious aquatic more or less mole-like creatures, 
but with long scaly tails, webbed feet, and long proboscis- 
like snouts, are known as desmans. The larger species, 
sixteen inches long, inhabits the lakes and streams of 
Southern Russia. In ancient times it was found in 

Fig. 97. 




THE GYMNURA. 

England. The other much smaller species is found in 
the region of the Pyrenees. Two allied terrestrial forms, 
burrowing and without webbed feet, come one from 
Japan, the other from North America. 

The shrews are a very numerous group of long- 
muzzled, pointed-nosed, in external appearance mouse- 
hke creatures, which include amongst them the absolutely 
smallest of all beasts. Some or other species are found 
almost all over the world, except Australia. 

The hedgehogs, animals so familiar in Europe, are 
animals clothed with sharp spines, which stand out 
defensively on every side, when the creature rolls itself 



364 



TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



up in a ball, as it invariably does when it finds itself 
in danger. There are about twenty different kinds 
of hedgehogs distributed throughout Europe, Africa, 
Korthern Asia and Hindostan. They feed on insects, 



Fig. 







THE DWARF TUPAIA. 



slugs, mice, lizards, and snakes, and will also eat eggs, 
fruit, and roots. In cold countries they hiberDate, that 
is, they pass their winter in sleep. 

An allied form, the haii^s of which are not spiny, 
though coarse, is the gymnura (Fig. 97). It is of the size 



THE OTHER BEASTS 



365 



of a very large rat. and has a long projecting and movable 
snout. It comes from the Indian Archipelago and the 
Malay Peninsula. 

The same region is tenanted by some very elegant 



Fig. 99. 




THE TYPICAL JUMPING SHREW. 



insectivores, known as tupaias or tree-shrews. As their 
name implies they are arboreal animals, and very active 
in their movements. They have long, more or less 
bushy tails, and were it not for their long pointed snouts, 
would greatly resemble squirrels, and they feed like those 



366 



TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 



animals, sitting on their haunches, and holding their 
food in their fore-paws. 

As these creatures resemble squirrels, so do another 
set of African insectivores resemble jerboas, and other 
Fig. 100. 




THE POTOMOGALE. 



long-legged, jumping rodents. They are known as the 
jumping-shrews (Fig. 99). They have large ears, very long- 
pointed proboscis -like snouts, long tails, and very long legs 



Fig. ioi. 




THE TAILLESS TANREC. 



and feet. There are eleven different species in the group. 
Another African insectivore may be compared with the 
coypu amongst rodents. This is the aquatic form which 
was discovered by M. du Chaillu in Western Africa, and 



^.J 



THE OTHER BEASTS 



367 



has received the name Potomogale. It is about two feet 
in length, and has a powerful tail by which it swims. 
An alHed form, which is small and mouse-like, inhabits 
the island of Madagascar. The same island possesses 



Fig. 102. 







THE SOLENODON OF CUBA. 

some curious insectivores, which, on account of their 
spines, were at first taken for hedgehogs of some kind. 
Their type is known as Centetes, and is an animal from 
twelve to sixteen inches long. It seems to be the most 
prolific of all animals, for it has been said to bear twenty- 
one at a birth. 

The islands of Hayti and Cuba possess each a species 
of a very curious form of insectivore called Sulenodon. 



368 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

The body is clothed with coarse hair and the fore-paws 
have very long claws. There is an exceedingly prolonged 
proboscis-like snout, and a long and naked tail. 

In South Africa certain burrowing animals are found 
which are known as golden moles. Their eyes are 
covered by the hairy skin of the head, and their very 
small ears are concealed in their fur, the tail is rudimen- 
tary, and the claws of their fore-paws are very long and 
powerful. There can be no doubt but ^hat golden moles 
and true moles have been evolved independently, just as 

Fig, 103. 




THE GOLDEN MOLE. 



there seems to be no essential generic relationship between 
some of the burrowing rodents. 

The foregoing animals are by universal consent classed 
together in a single order — Insectivora. 

The animal before spoken of * as having recently been 
discovered in Australia, and called JSfotoryctes, is very 
interesting, because it so much resembles a golden mole, 
thus constituting one more striking example of the 
independent origin of similar structures. 

We have before mentioned * the colugo, the so-called 
* See ants, p. 60. f See antp., p. 175. 



THE OTHER BEASTS 369 

'' flying-lemur " or Galeopithecus. It is now generally 
placed, as we have placed it, in this same order. This is 
done, however, much less from any positive resemblance 
it possesses to other insectivores than from the difficulty 
of knowing where else to put it, and a disinclination 
to rank it as forming an entire order by itself. At one 
time it was placed with the bats, as it was before placed 
with the lemurs. But ib certainly has no true affinity 
with either. 

As to this species, Mr. Alfred R. Wallace tells us : * 

" Another curious animal, which I met with in Singa- 
pore and in Borneo, but was more abundant in Sumatra, 
is galeopithecus — flying lemur. The creature has a broad 
membrane extending all round its body to the extremities 
of the toes, and to the point of the rather long tail. 
This enables it to pass obliquely through the air from 
one tree to another. It is sluggish in its motions, at 
least by day, going up a tree by short runs of a few 
feet, and then stopping a moment as if the action was 
difficult. It rests during the day, clinging to the trunks 
of trees, where its olive or brown fur, mottled with 
irregular whitish spots and blotches, resembles closely 
the colour of the mottled bark, and no doubt helps to 
protect it. Once, in a bright twilight, I saw one of these 
animals run up a trunk in a rather open place, and then 
glide obliquely through the air to another tree, on which 
it alighted near its base, and immediately began to ascend. 
I paced the distance from the one tree to the other, and 
found it to be seventy yards ; and the amount of descent 
I estimated at not more than thirty-five or forty feet, or 
less than one in five. This I think proves that the 
animal must have some power of guiding itself through 
the air, otherwise in so long a distance, it would have 
Httle chance of ahghting exactly upon the trunk. It 
feeds chiefly on leaves. The brain is very small and it 
possesses such remarkable tenacity of life, that it is 
exceedingly difficult to kill it by any ordinary means. 

* "Malay Archipelago," 2nd edition, vol. i. p. 135. 

2 4 



370 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

The tail is prehensile, and is probably made use of as an 
additional support while feeding. It is said to have only 
a single young one at a time, and my own observation 
confirms this statement, for I once shot a female with a 
very small blind and naked little creature clinging closely 
to its breast, which was very much wrinkled, reminding 
me of the young marsupials. The fur of the back and 
limbs is short but exquisitely soft." 

With the colugo we close our notice of the Insectivora 
and of all existing beasts, but before we conclude a word 
must be said with respect to some fossil forms. The 
Eocene rocks of North America and Europe have dis- 
closed relics of the jaws and teeth of creatures which 
show signs of relationship to the insectivora on the one 
hand, and to the pouched beasts or marsupials on the 
other. The same relationships are also suggested by 
the jaws and teeth of small creatures, which have 
been found in secondary rocks, the Jurassic formation 
of the United States and of England. Mammalian 
remains have also been quite recently discovered in the 
chalk. 

lu is time now to present in a tabular form an enumer- 
ation of all the ordinal groups of existing mammals. They 
may be set down as follows : 

CLASS MAMMALIA. 
Sub-Class L— Placentalia. 

Order i. Primates j Sub- order A. Man and apes. 
( ,, B. Lemuroids. 

„ 2. Cheiroptera . . . Bats. 
„ 3. Insectivora . . . Moles, shrews, hedge- 
hogs, &c. 
„ 4. Carnivora . . . Racoons, bears, weasels, 
otters, cats, civets, 
and dogs. 
,, 5. Pinnipedia . , . Sea-bears and seals. 



THE OTHER BEASTS 371 

Sub-Class I. — Placentalia — continued. 

Order 6. Rodentia . . . Squirrels rats, hedge- 

hogs, hares, &c. 
„ 7. Ungulata Sub-order A. Bisons, antelopes, deer, 
camels, rhinoceroses, 
horses, &c. 
B. Hyrax. 
„ 8. Proboscidea . . . Elephant. 
„ 9. Sirenia . . . ' Dugong and manatee. 
„ 10. Cetacea .... Whales and porpoises. 
„ II. Edentata . . . Sloths, anteaters, arma- 

dillos, pangolins. 
Sub-Class II.— Didelphia. 

Order 12. Marsupialia . . . Opossums, 



phalangers, &c. 
Sub-Class III.— Ornithodelpiiia. 

Order 13. Monotremata . . . Platypus and echidna 

As to the mode of succession in which these variou;. 
orders may have been evolved we can as yet only make 
more or less plausible conjectures. 

On the whole it seems probable that the Insectivora — 
especially such a form as that spineless hedgehog, gym- 
nura — may amongst existing animals give us the best 
general idea of primitive mammalian life. 

Certain marsupials seem closely allied to insectivores, 
and may have been a lateral offshoot from ancestral 
insectivorous forms. 

The platypus and echidna show characters which 
point down below the whole class of beasts and towards 
reptiles, but they are animals of very peculiar formation, 
and there seem to be no other existing beasts which 
have any special relationship to them, save perhaps some 
of the edentates. But these again are specially modified 
forms, and our speculations are here, as in so many other 
instances, checked by the probability of the independent 
origins of similar structures. 



372 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

It is difficult, if not impossible, to believe that the 
armadillos, pangolins, and aard-vark ever had any- 
common ancestors, save such as were near the base of 
the whole mammalian tree of life. The whales and 
porpoises on the one hand, and the sirenia (or mer- 
maids) on the other, are both isolated groups ; though we 
may in imagination connect the latter with the elephant 
and odd-toed ungulates, and the former with the non- 
ruminating, even-toed, hoofed beasts. 

The rodents are also isolated, but that their peculiar 
kind of dentition has more than once arisen independently 
is proved to us by the wombat and the aye-aye, both of 
which, though no rodents, have rodent-hke cutting teeth. 

The seals and sea-bears or pinnipedia are doubtless 
modified carnivora of one kind or another, and the car- 
nivora themselves may have been modified from early 
insectivora. The origin of lemuroids is, as recently 
stated, problematical, while as to that of bats we have 
as yet no fragment of evidence. 

Monkeys, as we pointed out in our first article, stand 
alone on a veritable zoological island, save that the human 
form very closely resembles them. 

As to the origin of the whole class Mammalia, we 
have not yet enough evidence to enable us to affirm 
anything with certainty, but probability points to its 
derivation from one or other of the earlier forms of 
reptilian life. 

It now remains but to glance over the earth's surface 
and see what are the beasts which characterise, respect- 
ively, its several geographical regions. The first region, 
which is made up by Europe, Africa north of the Sahara, 
and Asia north of the Himalaya — excluding the south 
of Arabia— may be called the Northern Old World region. 
This is the special region of sheep, and goats, and deer, 



THE OTHER BEASTS 373 

the musk-ox, the camel, the musk-deer, moles, desmans, 
dormice, and various special carnivores. 

The second region may be called the Ethiopic, consist- 
ing as it does of Africa south of the Sahara, with Mada- 
gascar and Southern Arabia. This is (in South Africa) 
the great region of antelopes ; and here the giraffe and 
hippopotamus now have their only home. Buffaloes and 
chevrotains inhabit it, also zebras, the aard-wolf, and the 
aard-vark, the gorilla and chimpanzee, all the baboons, 
the thumbless apes called colobi, the potto and the galagos, 
and the golden-moles. In Madagascar are the true 
lemurs, the indris, and that most peculiar beast, the 
aye -aye. 

The third geographical region is the Indian, and 
includes Asia south of the Himalaya down to the Island 
of Bah. In this region we have the orang (Borneo and 
Sumatra). All the long-armed apes, the macaques, the 
slender and slow loris, the tarsier, tupaias, and the colugo, 
the Malayan tapir, the nilghai, the tiger, and hunting 
leopard, the sloth bear, chevrotains, and the four-horned 
antelopes. 

The fourth geographical region is the Australian, and 
includes the Indian Archipelago from the Island of 
Lombock, Moluccas, New Guinea, Australia, Tasmania, 
and New Zealand. Here we find all the marsupials 
exclusively, save the true opossums ; the monotremes, 
and the dingo. 

The fifth region is that of Northern New World, and 
embraces North America down to North Mexico. Here 
alone are to be found the wapiti, the American bison, 
the prong-buck, and the mountain sheep, the racoon 
and coati, pouched-rats and vesper-mice, the musquash, 
the skunk, and the American badger. 

Lastly we have the region of the New World Tropics, 



374 TYPES OF ANIMAL LIFE 

which consists of America south of ISIorth Mexico, and 
including the Antilles. This is the region of sloths, 
ant-eaters and armadillos, of howling and spider monkeys, 
sakis, squirrel monkeys, and marmosets. This is also the 
region of the true vampire bat, Desmodus. Here also 
alone are found chinchillas, cavies, and the Patagonian 
hare, the capybara, or the jaguar and the ocelots ; and 
lastly, here are found the tapirs, othep than that of the 
Malay Archipelago. 

We have incidentally noted that various forms are 
absent from the Antilles and Madagascar, which we 
might have expected to find in countries so warm, and 
with such abundant vegetation. More noteworthy still 
is it that all Oceanic Islands are devoid of beasts, save 
bats and such as might have been imported by man or 
have been accidentally transported by floating timber, &c. 
It is evident that the distribution of animals over the 
earth's surface to-day, and also their distribution through 
past time, as evidenced by their fossil remains, both point 
to a gradual and natural origin and distribution of every 
kind of beast composing the mammalian class. We say 
of every kind of heast, because as regards man, no 
reasonable opinion can be gathered from the facts set 
down in this series of essays. The great distinguishing 
characteristic of man is his intellectual energy, above all, 
his power of perceiving that a difference exists between 
right and wrong, between duty and pleasure. But no 
inquiry as to the human mind has been here attempted 
for the only purpose of the present work is to serve as 
an introduction to the study of the higher animals 
especially those which constitute the class of beasts — the 
class Mammalia. 



*My;85,9<5 



Printed by Ballantvne, HANSON & CO 
London and Edinbursh 



JUN 2o 1901 






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